Eastern and Southern-Africa 1 (1972).

udanese are black, muslim, Arabic speaking people and were the kindest, most courteous and helpful people we ever met. They invited us to the festival of Id-al-Fitr, the end of the Ramadan, the muslim fast. Sitting on their carpet we joined their "breakfast" (literally: breaking the fast) of ram in a spicy sauce.
Sudan has no roads, only tracks through the desert. We stuck to the Nile and found enough villages to stop at night. During daytime, cycling through a heat of over 110° F, the few trucks who made up the whole traffic, always stopped and asked us if we needed water. There was little vegetation and what managed to exist protected its tiny leaves with long thorns. These were plentiful hidden in the sand and about 20 punctures daily were normal, the record was set on 34 in one day.
We managed because of two army-posts in between, who had water supplied to them. Where the desert became scrubbush, it was very exciting. Zebras, antilopes, ostriches all crossed our path. Giraffes stared at us with wondering eyes, some elephants in the bush were too busy eating to look.
While repairing a flat tyre, we got visitors from a local tribe. Their outfit was very original: loincloth, many beadstrings and the inseparable spear. Modern times were manifested only in plastic wires in their ears and made them look like sputniks. We took a picture, they wanted money; that was know too. We never do, so refused. Knifes were threatingly pulled out, but a deal was soon made: a box of matches.
In Ethiopia we found one of the poorest people we ever met. In the villages we could not buy any food, which never happened before, so we suffered hunger for two days, before we reached a town, not being used to buy and carry food for several days with us. Since then we carried always enough supplies of food, even if our map showed some little towns on the way. Still we had a lack: water. When we asked for it, people showed us a dirty pool or a brownish stream at the best within one mile. No wonder they don't wash their clothes too often and we learned to take a bath at night with one pint of water.
Camping we always did near a village. Once we pitched our tent between six little huts and all the inhabitants came to look. After our cooking an empty tin was left and a woman wanted to trade it for 6 eggs! We added an orange and her eyes became wide of wonder. The chief decided he had to protect us for bandits and slept in front of our tent on his mat, only to wake up long after breakfast, when we pulled down our tent; apparently he was not so much concerned about bandits, neither were we, also being sound asleep.
More desert waited us in the North of Kenia, about 300 miles and the map showed only 3 tiny dots with a name. Roads still unpaved of course, so it meant a week of riding.