This would be my 10th trip to Africa and third alone this year!

Dec 26, 2013
Flight: Austin, TX (AUS) to Houston, TX (IAH), United, First
Flight: Houston, TX (IAH) to Chicago, IL (ORD), United, First
Flight: Chicago, IL (ORD) to Frankfurt, Germany (FRA), Lufthansa 748-i, Business
Dec 27, 2013
Flight: Frankfurt, Germany (FRA) to Khartoum, Sudan (KRT), Lufthansa A340, Business
Hotel: German Guesthouse; Khartoum, Sudan ($80)
A far too early start this morning on too little sleep. The shuttle picked me up around 4:45AM for my 6:50AM flight. Luckily the weather looked good today with no anticipated delays. The flights to Houston and Chicago proceeded without incident and I settled into the United lounge for a few hours until my flight to Frankfurt. I made sure to charge all my electronic devices... I'm carrying my phone, point and shoot camera, a GoPro, and my netbook laptop for backing up photos.

I'd been keeping an eye out for F availability on the 748-i, phantom availability was showing but it never became available. The only time I'd flown LH in J was SCL-EZE 10 years ago, so I was still looking forward to the experience. The 748-i has J split downstairs and upstairs, I had picked out my seat upstairs. The flight was uneventful as well. I watched a few movies but had trouble sleeping. I have very wide shoulders and when the seat was reclined my arms would not fit! I had to sleep on my side.



ORD-FRA LH 747-8i

We arrived in Frankfurt clear at the end of the Z-gates so it was a looong slog to get over to the B-terminal. Luckily the airport was pretty empty at this point and there was no line at clearing security. I still had a few hours to spare at the Business class lounge.

The flight to Khartoum was on an A340-300. The flight stops in Khartoum enroute to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Lufthansa is discontinuing this route next month so I am glad I was able to use this routing. Originally I had booked an award via Istanbul, arriving into Khartoum at the zombie hour of 2AM. The Frankfurt flight arrived at 6PM the previous evening, much better.

I started talking with a Swiss girl sitting beside me, she was on her way to Ethiopia. We started talking travel and turns out she had been to Bhutan recently. It's not often you meet someone who has been there.. so we sat discussing that for awhile. I hadn't gotten much sleep on the Chicago flight so tried to get a bit of a nap in. The meal was delicous roast goose.


FRA-KRT LH A340

We arrived on time just before sunset. The flight landed to the north and taxied to the stairways, the Khartoum airport does not have jetbridges. Supposedly a new international airport has been built some distance away but opening date is unknown. The existing airport is right in the middle of the city. There were some Sudan Airways fuselage carcases on one end of the field.


We disembarked onto the buses and I managed to be one of the first ones off into immigration. However here I got confused, there was a desk marked Entry Visa, I know I needed to get mine. But the lady there waved me over to the immigration desks, at this point I ended up at the end of the line. Eventually I get the right piece of paper stamped then go back to Entry Visa. I paid my $100 visa fee and had to wait awhile longer while more paper was shuffled around. Then they took photo and fingerprints and finally made it out into baggage claim nearly an hour after landing! I was the last one off the Lufthansa flight by this point.

There wasn't anyone waiting for me or holding a sign with my name as I exited out of baggage claim. I looked around confusedly for a minute before an old guy stood up and had a sign with German Guesthouse on it. He was waiting on one more passenger.. eventually after 20 minutes we gave up and drove to the guesthouse, about 10 minutes away. The Khartoum airport was pretty calm, no big hassle of people asking me for taxis, hotel, etc.

Finally got to the guesthouse about 7:30, was shown to my room, a nice clean twin with aircon, TV, etc. The guesthouse is $80 a night that includes laundry, meals, sodas, airport shuttle. So actually not too bad a deal. Dinner was still laid out, a beef stew with potato salad and other sides. After that I called it an early night as I had to leave at 6:30AM the next morning for the ride to the Meroe pyramids! I changed some money at the black-market rate of 7.8 SDG:$1.

German Guesthouse