At the time of my visit to Sudan, most of the travel resources I came across discouraged visiting the country. My curiosity got the best of me, though, and I arrived in Khartoum wondering what I would discover in a place that relatively few travelers seemed to visit.
Sudan was frequently in the international news during that period because of conflicts in Darfur and other parts of the country. Those tragedies were very real, but the Sudan I encountered during my trip was more complicated than the image I had seen from overseas. Sudan was an enormous country, and life in the places I visited could feel far removed from conflicts taking place hundreds of miles away.
One man I met in Khartoum compared it to living a normal life in New York while watching news about wildfires in California or a hurricane along the Gulf Coast. It was his way of explaining how distant events within the same country could feel from everyday life in the capital.
My trip took place during a very different period in Sudan’s history. The country has since undergone enormous political upheaval and, beginning in 2023, another devastating war. This page reflects Sudan as I personally experienced it at the time rather than present-day travel conditions.
Explore Khartoum
During my visit, Khartoum surprised me with its relaxed atmosphere and the friendliness of many of the people I met. The city was also one of the best places for me to begin understanding Sudan’s remarkably long history, with museums covering ancient Nubian civilizations, the Christian kingdoms of medieval Nubia and more recent periods of Sudanese history.
Khartoum also sits at one of Africa’s great geographic landmarks: the confluence of the Blue Nile and White Nile. From here the two rivers become the Nile and continue north through Sudan and Egypt before eventually reaching the Mediterranean Sea.
Explore the Meroë Pyramids
Long before modern Sudan existed, the Nile Valley here was home to the powerful Kingdom of Kush. At different periods the Kushite rulers controlled territory extending through much of what is now northern Sudan and into Egypt, and Kushite kings even ruled Egypt as its 25th Dynasty.
Meroë later became one of the kingdom’s great political and royal centers. Today its archaeological landscape contains the remains of temples, settlements and extensive royal cemeteries filled with the distinctive steep-sided pyramids of Kushite kings and queens.
The ruins at Meroë are among the most impressive surviving reminders that some of the ancient Nile Valley’s great civilizations developed far south of the monuments most travelers associate with Egypt.
Explore Dinder National Park
Near Sudan’s border with Ethiopia, Dinder National Park protects more than 10,000 square kilometers of savannah, woodland, wetlands and seasonal waterways. The landscape was a dramatic contrast to the deserts I associated with much of northern Sudan.
The park provides important habitat for a wide range of wildlife, including antelope, buffalo, warthogs and an impressive variety of migratory birds. Its wetlands become particularly important during the dry season, when wildlife concentrates around the remaining sources of water.
Explore Port Sudan
Port Sudan sits along Sudan’s Red Sea coast and has long served as the country’s principal seaport. The surrounding landscape is extremely arid, creating a striking contrast with the life beneath the surface of the Red Sea.
For me, the real attraction was the water. Coral reefs and abundant marine life made the coast around Port Sudan an incredible place for snorkeling and scuba diving, and showed me yet another side of a country I had previously associated mostly with desert.
