Day104 - 105 Khartoum to Galabat (South Sudan) We were sad to leave Khartoum, a city we'd grown to like very much having spent over a week there. We headed south east towards the Ethiopian border and spent our first night bush camping in a field at the edge of the Nile near Was Madani. Although a beautiful spot we were kept up all night by lorries thundering past on the main road. The following day we refuelled in Gedaref with the dirtiest diesel we've seen so far, and said goodbye to tarmac for the next few weeks...We had hoped to reach Gallabat and cross the border into Matema, Ethiopia, however the road was so terrible - corrugated and potholed, that we had to go slowly. Cattle trucks came past us and stirred up clouds of dust so all Camilla's work cleaning in Khartoum was a waste of time! The bad state of the road meant that the exhaust problem returned. We had had it welded in Khartoum and supposedly re-attached to the engine to stop it vibrating and breaking off - but it had come completely off again and we noticed that although the mechanics had attached the pipe to a bracket, they had not attached the bracket to the engine... Another issue that arose was that our second battery we had had charged in Khartoum had been fried and no longer worked, meaning our flurescent lights, electric cool box and power supply did not work. Also the welding on the roof rack broke again in the same place and to top it all off our windscreen has been ruined from the welding work - another thing to be replaced. We really are feeling that when we take the car to be repaired we seem to come out with more damage than when we went in - it's a case of taking one step forward and three back. Due to the problems we didn't make it to the border but bushcamped in what seemed like a remote spot in a corn field, away from the main road. The peace didn't last for long - we realised after supper that we'd set the table and chairs up on an ants nest and were bitten all on our legs then trying to get a good night's sleep we were woken up at 2am by a "mobile mosque" - a man walking from village to village with a loud, distorted tape recording of the call to prayer! He seemed to think we'd appreciate his service and stood under our tent for about twenty minutes!! In the morning we had another disturbance, this time not so amusing...a swarm of bees appeared from nowhere as we were having breakfast and were attracted to something in the car. We had to throw everything into the back of Biggles and drive with our windows open to try to get rid of them - there were several hundred bees in the cab - miraculously we managed not to get stung. We managed to do some basic 'bush mechanics' fixing to the exhaust and roof rack at the side of the road using bits of wire and cable ties - a huge crowd of people gathered to watch - children herding cattle and colourful women carrying water containers on their heads. They were so excited to have their photos taken and couldn't believe it when I showed them the digital image on the back of the camera - they thought it was magic.