The days to Dongola

Cyclical Levels of Cleanliness:

Day 1: Shower. Wear 1 set of clean clothes for day, fresh t-shirt to bed. Brush teeth twice. Copious use of hand sanitizer.

Day 2: return to day clothes, same night t-shirt. Brush hair. Use baby wipes to “shower.” Good use of hand sani & t.p. Brush teeth morning & night.

Day 3: Day clothes back on, but after dinner is spent cleaning & repairing bike, too tired to change into night T. Brush hair out of ponytail. Brush teeth twice. Remembered to wash hands for lunch only.

Day 4: Still in same clothes for riding & sleeping (minus spandex). Continue to brush teeth twice. Hair in same style as previous day, too dirty to move, plastered to head w/ helmet, anyway. Brushed teeth. Scrubbed w/ clean desert sand to get grease off fingers after dinner.

Day 5: Plan to wash sleeping bag liner on rest day, b/c still sleeping in same clothes. No need to put clean clothes on dirty, sweaty, unwashed body. Grime accumulating under nails. Forgot about the baby wipes. At least able to brush teeth & rinse toothbrush. Hair hasn’t moved in 3 days.

Day 6: As soon as we make it to Dongola, we’ve got water & a rest day. No need for day’s ablutions—I’ll take care of things then.

“Shower:” a partially-clothed rinse with a public hose, scrunched in a bath in a red box. Due to Degradation and Desperation Levels*, we’re quite happy to be this clean!

*to be defined at a later date.

Other than that, we had a phenomenal ride across the desert, kicking around in the sand, before finally hitting pavement again the last 20k to our ferry crossing of the Nile, followed by said showers & laundry via the red boxes.