Day 5 - No shower.Got hosed down by some locals using a petrol water pump, fully clothed by the Nile.Unfortunately, soap was not involved.

We got up early in an effort to avoid the heat today and trooped off to Gebel Barkal.We visited the temple first which was locked, but still pretty amazing from the outside.I walked around to the front of the temple and wandered through it from the entrance, as it was supposed to be seen in ancient times.

I did a lap around the immense Gebel Barkal mountain and climbed up to some Nubian style pyramids, one of them was even intact, with the top still present.It was nice to see, the Italian idiot had missed one.

There were also some traditional Egyptian pyramids that could be seen from the Nubian pyramids and it was interesting to see the differences in the side by side.I wandered back to the truck and Sarah told me the caretaker had arrived and unlocked the temple.I wandered back down to inspect the holy of holies.It was great inside, interesting to see some Nubian depictions of the Egyptian gods.The caretaker insisted on being my guide, even after I told him this was not necessary, which I found frustrating to say the very least.Especially because just about everything he was telling me was rubbish.I ended up educating him, I couldn't stand it, I had to say something.

We got back in the truck and I had a little vent about our "guide" and we went off to Dongola.We got there and we had heaps of time, so we went down the to the Nile and saw some old derelict steamers and had a climb all over them.We went back to the truck, in search of cold drinks again and got into a nice little conversation with some Sudanese women.One of the Asma, spoke especially good English and her mother kept telling me how beautiful I was.Did I mention I love Sudan?

We went back to the truck and pulled up by the Nile to have lunch, there were some locals there and they had a pump coming out of the river.Siobhan, Kath, David, Guy, Hylton and I managed to convince them to soak us with the hose, from which a lot of cold Nile water was coming out.

We dried off and got back on the truck and set up camp and quite a rocky bush camp.I slept outside yet again, no sand storm this time.