The waters of the two rivers are very different in taste and appearance. Neither is considered first class drinking water by residents of Khartoom; but after their waters are mingled well together, the mixture is deemed excellent.
-A Walk Across Africa, James A. Grant, 1864, Description of Mugran al-Nilayn, Meeting of the Two Niles, after arriving downriver from the source of the White Nile with John Hanning Speke
I guess that if you live at the confluence of the Blue and the White Niles you consider yourself a connoisseur of their individual tastes, tannins from Lake Tana and vegetals from Lake Victoria. Each on its own, not so good. But mixed just right at the Mugran, it is pure Janna, Heaven, and you can drink a fine cuppa in the Mugran’s public Janayna, Garden, heaven in its diminutive form.