Letters
Sudanese hospitality
Sir: I feel that I really must reply to Nicholas Coleridge's highly distorting arti- cle (Diary, 5 January) concerning Sudanese hospitality. Like Mr Coleridge I also travelled in the region between Port Sudan and the Eritrean border earlier last year; unlike him I found the hospitality second to none.
Leaving Port Sudan, where my double room cost me 14 Sudanese pounds per night, roughly equal to £4 sterling accord- ing to the market as opposed to 'official' exchange rate (which no sane visitor should bother with), I arrived at Suahin to find the only hotel there closed for the season. Seeking help at the police station, I found that out of season it also doubled up as a hostel. There I spent a pleasant night, courtesy of the Sudanese police force, along with a number of other Europeans (most of whom spent the night abusing their hosts; hospitality by smoking pot).
The following day I arrived at Kassala, a charming though I now fear a beleaguered town on the Ethiopian border, and there I put up at the Africa Hotel (seven Sudanese pounds or roughly £2 sterling for a double room), which though somewhat spartan by Western standards was both clean and tidy. May I suggest to Mr Coleridge that in future he checks to see how representative his hotel at Karora (misspelt Korara in his column) is of Sudanese hotels in general, and may I further suggest that anyone in the habit of taking 130-mile-plus taxi rides should be prepared to pay above the odds. I have found the Sudanese people among the most helpful and hospitable in the world.
Aidan Hetherington
19 Nelson Street, St Andrews, Fife
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