"Shendi" a Shendi Travel Page by maykal

What is there to say about Shendi? I have no idea. From what I've heard, it is a typical town in northern Sudan, nothing special, nothing terrible, just ordinary.

It does, however, lie close to the Pyramids of Bajrawiya (Meroe), which are just a twenty minutes bus ride from the centre, perhaps making Shendi a good base for visiting them.

My experience of Shendi was a short one. We'd been at the Pyramids until sunset, and tried to find a lift back to Khartoum that evening. It was not to be...none of the buses had any room for two stray khawajas, and there was very little traffic on the road at all. Eventually, a lorry stopped and offered to take us as far as Shendi. We took a shortcut, off-road bumping over sand dunes and into hedges, scaring more than a few goats, while the lorry driver went about his business dropping off spare parts to various mechanics. As we pulled into the bus station, it was clear that the last bus had left many hours before, so the driver offered to put us up for the night with his family.

The family were somewhat bemused at first, then delighted, asking many many questions about us, what we were doing in Sudan, what we thought of it, were we married, why not, etc, etc.... In the morning, I was taken on a short walk in the neighbourhood. We obviously weren't in the centre of town, as this was but a lowly suburb on the outskirts. It seemed fairly standard, not dirt-poor, not middle-class, just mud-brick homes and a few shops, the odd mosque...could have been any town in Sudan really. Then we were taken to the bus station to get transport home.

Maybe this review is a bit unfair towards Shendi. Maybe there are some fascinating facts about the town that I didn't discover. Maybe the centre of town is an architectural masterpiece. Maybe...I'll have to find out another time...