• Sweltering heat in Khartoum

August 23, 2004

Francis Khoo looks upon his sleeping team mate at Doha Airport	Halim and Faruk pouring over maps while discussing the route	Farhani Aisyah Aziz bt. A Ghani, PETRONAS External Relations meets with Azman

The heat hits you like a brick wall as you step out of the plane… And that was in Doha, Qatar at 4.40 in the morning! After breakfast and sitting around for about 6 hours, the PAT advance group finally continued on to the next part of the journey.

The scenery as we approach Khartoum is quite surreal – a haze hangs over the desert that looks like swirls of melted chocolate ice cream. And then the mighty Nile comes into view; all along its banks are green fields.

We arrive without any fanfare. Logistics Director Faruk Rahman has been in Khartoum for the past few days and he was on hand to help clear customs and immigration. After about 2 hours, we walked into the 42-degree Celsius heat and headed straight for the Holiday Villa.

The advance team is here to clear the cars and make sure everything is in place before the rest of the team gets here. According to Faruk, there have been a few delays in Port Sudan due to humanitarian aid coming in for the Darfur region but he is hopeful the cars will be in Khartoum in the next few days.

Almost as soon as he arrives, Media and Public Relations Director Azman Baharuddin is busy meeting up with local PETRONAS staff to finalise the details for the community relations program and the flag off next week.

Meanwhile, Expedition Leader Halim Rahman is still busy pouring over reports of road conditions and border crossing formalities. He hopes to cover all possibilities but feels that there are some surprises in store for the team as we prepare in this final week before the start of Trans-Sahara 2004 expedition.