A Glimpse of North Sudan

North Sudan is a largely unknown, thought-to-be-unsafe land. A Glimpse of North Sudan aims to correct that. This book is far more than a travelogue. From diaries and photographs of a safe, non-alcoholic, wonderful holiday, it tells of a short tour of a smiling poor people with an ancient, frequently violent history, pyramids and tombs in royal cemeteries with wonderful paintings and reliefs to behold. It is a largely desert country but where the Blue and White Niles combine to form a majestic life-giving river on its way to the Mediterranean Sea. In addition, there are descriptions of black Sudanese pharaohs of Egypt, the lifestyle of a Bedouin family along with British involvement in ruling the country (a section on the Battle of Omdurman led by Kitchener with a young, ambitious Winston Churchill in the ranks) and of the civil wars since independence in 1956. Finally, it suggests a way out of the cul-de-sac of poverty and deprivation. This book is a must-read for the general-interest reader of a forgotten, though fascinating, land.

Eric and Clare Lowry, both alumni of Trinity College, Dublin, and respectively a chartered accountant and a solicitor, are adventurous travellers. From Luang Prabang in Laos to the River Napo in Ecuador, from the icebergs in Patagonia to the lagoon of Aitutaki in the Cook Islands, from Aleppo in Syria to the Christian sunken churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia, they each while travelling write daily diaries. Advised by family and friends to avoid Sudan, they set out in November 2017 for a short holiday there. By combining both their diaries and a little history, this book relates their safe experience of a fascinating, forgotten and largely unknown land.