A little less than three weeks on camels suffices for the journey, which is dull and uninteresting except for the first time it is made, when the novelty is calculated to interest the new-comer.
-On the Western Frontier of the Sudan, P.K. Boulnois, The Geographical Journal, June 1924
Bulnois is here describing the well travelled 370 mile route from El Obeid west to El Fasher. If instead he had travelled north from El Obeid and doubled the days of his journey, following the Darb al-Arba’īn to Egypt, he would have found the route anything but dull even for a two-timer like me or a hundred-timer like KhairAllah, who no doubt was amused every day by my complete ignorance of camels, camel saddling, and aseeda eating, for which you dip two fingers into the shared pot, not one as I usually did.