Port Sudan is Sudan’s principal seaport and one of the country’s largest cities. Sitting along the Red Sea in northeastern Sudan, it felt very different from Khartoum. I thought of it less as a huge city and more as a dry coastal city built around its harbor and access to the sea.
During my visit, Port Sudan was also the only place in the country where I remember seeing other foreign travelers. Some had apparently come primarily for the Red Sea and its diving.
My trip took place many years ago, during a period when photography in Sudan could attract unwanted attention. I had heard stories of travelers getting into trouble after photographing places authorities considered sensitive, so I was much more cautious with my camera here than I normally would have been.
Because of that, most of the photographs I took in Port Sudan were around the harbor and the Red Sea rather than government buildings or other potentially sensitive areas.
I actually found Port Sudan more visually appealing than Khartoum, yet somehow I came home with very little photographic evidence of it. Part of that was my caution with photography, but part of it was simply poor planning on my part.
A local helped me get around during much of my stay. One day I mentioned that I had taken photographs around the harbor while I was alone, and his reaction was essentially, “Thank God you didn’t get caught.” That was enough to convince me I had probably been wise not to push my luck.
I did get this photograph of a man completely absorbed in his book. He seemed far too interested in what he was reading to notice me.
What really surprised me about Port Sudan was the scuba diving. I had never thought of Sudan as a diving destination, but the Red Sea has coral reefs, clear water and an enormous variety of marine life.
My own dive began in a way that, looking back, was much less reassuring than it should have been.
I assumed the man taking me out would be my dive partner. Instead, after roughly 45 minutes in a speedboat, he stopped far offshore and told me he planned to fish while I went diving by myself.
This was a terrible setup for me at the time. I had only made a handful of dives in my life, it had been a while since my last one, and I was rusty enough that I struggled just getting some of my equipment assembled correctly.
Recreational divers are normally trained to dive with a buddy, and an inexperienced diver attempting an unfamiliar wreck alone is not something I would recommend or repeat today. At the time, though, I made the poor decision to continue.
I put on my gear, entered the water and descended.
Not far below me was a sunken ship.
It was my first wreck dive, and doing it alone made the experience especially eerie. The sky was overcast that day, and the water became darker surprisingly quickly as I descended.
The photograph above shows part of the wreck’s deck surrounded by small fish. I stayed outside the wreck rather than attempting to penetrate the structure, which was definitely the right decision given my limited experience.
Once I got past the uncomfortable circumstances of the dive, I was amazed by the amount of marine life around the wreck and reef.
One advantage of being underwater was that I could finally use my camera without worrying about anyone objecting to photography. Unfortunately, the inexpensive underwater camera I had at the time wasn’t especially good in deeper or darker water, so only a handful of my photographs came out well enough to keep.
I originally identified some of these fish as Sohal tangs, but looking back at the photographs I’m not confident enough to assign every species a name. The Red Sea has an enormous variety of reef fish, and I’d rather leave an identification uncertain than confidently get it wrong.
These photographs still don’t capture the highlights of the dive. Some of the most colorful fish were deeper down, where my camera performed worst.
The pufferfish above was one of the better photographs I managed to bring back.
My final photograph shows a parrotfish.
For a place where I took so few photographs on land, Port Sudan ended up giving me one of the strangest experiences of my entire Sudan trip. I arrived expecting an arid Red Sea port and somehow ended up alone underwater beside a shipwreck surrounded by tropical fish.
I definitely wouldn’t repeat the solo-diving part, but the Red Sea itself was unforgettable.
