Traveling by myself I made it from Sicily across the Med to Tunisia, and hitch-hiked south through Tunisia and east across Libya into Egypt, with a half-dozen memorable adventures on the way. Saw most of the amazing ancient Egyptian monuments, and after about a month in Egypt, found myself in Aswan, at the ferry boat wharf on Lake Nasser, behind the Aswan High Dam. The ferry consisted of three barges strapped side by side, the center one having the engine and steering equipment, with a huge rough-plank-built paddle wheel at the stern.. Each of the outside barges held one well-used auto. There was a nice permanent awning over the heavy steel deck plates of the center barge where I spent most of my time, sitting and sleeping on the deck. There were not too many folks on the ferry, about 30, almost all of them Sudanese camel breeders who had taken their herds of camels north across the Nubian Desert and sold them for meat in Egypt. These guys were returning to the Sudan, carrying their camel saddles, and lots of "stuff" they had bought in Egypt and were taking home. Pretty hard lot, they were. Very black, wearing loose fitting cotton robes and headcloths, each one with a wicked double edged knife up his loose sleeve on a thong around his left biceps. It was a bit unnerving to have them do a quick chop with an empty left hand and have it suddenly filled with a weapon ready to be drawn from the scabbard by the right hand. I found them quite friendly, and used my 20 words of Arabic on them, and we got along famously, sharing food, etc. The ferry trip took two days and two nights, traveling through a really strange moonscape. There was almost no vegetation along the banks of Lake Nasser, the water coming right up to orange/yellow rocks and sand on both sides. Never got out of sight of at least one shore. Unfortunately we passed the amazing monuments at Abu Simbel at night, so I didn't get to see them, not even by moonlight. (Finally got to see Abu Simbel 22 years later when I took my parents to Egypt as a retirement present.)
Early morning of the third day we arrived at Wadi Halfa, in the Sudan. What a hole. A few nasty crumbling buildings and a run down railway terminus. Very hot and humid, of course, so close to the lake. And infested with flies, flies, and more flies! History buffs may recall that the Mahdi's head is supposed to be buried secretly somewhere at Wadi Halfa.
I cleared perfunctory customs, got my passport stamped, and bought a fourth class ticket on the train across the Nubian desert to Khartoum. Train (and ferry, for that matter) only ran twice a week. Yes, they DID have first, second, third, and fourth class carriages. The fourth class one had wooden slat benches and no windows, only heavy wooden shutters, always left open. Now, it was hot and close and smelly in the carriages, and those Sudanese in the "know" climbed up on top of the carriages and sat on the roof. I followed. After a few times it was easier to scramble up there from between the carriages, hanging grimly on to random pipes and fittings for support. No ladder or side-rails or any safety features on the roof, of course. It was much nicer up there as long as I kept my head covered from the punishing sun. Breezier and a much better view, and only occasionally did the coal-burning loco drop ashes on us.
Everyone on top sat on the ridge-line facing right or left, with feet slightly lower on the curving carriage roof. The train stopped several times per day, but only for the five daily Moslem prayer times or to take on boiler water at one of the God-forsaken watering depots. There was no other reason to stop, as the Nubian desert is THE most desolate I have ever witnessed, (and I have seen quite a few deserts). Not a tree, not a bush, not a blade of grass. It was so dry and desolate that there were not even any bugs or flies once away from Wadi Halfa !! Quite amazing.
The railway line itself was well enough maintained. One strange feature did catch my attention. For hundreds of miles we passed regular holes dug into the desert along the railway line, each one about 12 feet long, eight feet wide, and two feet deep, with vertical walls and square top edges, and a 20 foot gap to the next one. I spent quite a while trying to figure out who had been doing so much digging recently. It was a shock when I finally realized that those holes had been dug by British Army Engineers in 1898 when they originally built the railway !! Those holes were dug to procure the ballast on which the rails were laid, slightly higher than the surrounding desert. There is so little rain (less than 1 cm per year) out there that the holes hadn't "weathered" at all in the preceding 77 years, and actually looked like they had been dug the previous week! (History buffs will remember that this is the railway Kitchener had built to keep his forces supplied on the expedition to punish the Sudanese for killing Chinese Gordon.)
It was two days and one night to Khartoum. I slept on the roof with everyone else. It was a little unnerving, because I figured I might roll off, down the sloping roof, but we all just lay crossways, legs on one side of the peak and head on the other, and things were fine. It got pretty darn cold at night, out there in the desert, in spite of the very high daytime temperatures. I put on my flannel shirt and jacket. When I awoke freezing in the early hours, I found out that all of my Sudanese camel-herder "buddies" had quietly moved behind me on the roof, and that I was at that moment the official cold-wind-break for the whole sleeping lot of them. Clever buggers. I quietly stepped over each of them in turn to the rear end of the carriage roof, spending the rest of the night with them breaking the frigid wind for me. The stars were just extraordinary, way out there away from any ambient earth-light. Just before dawn as I looked north, I watched the pole star slip below the horizon.