NUBIAN DESERT:
Safe through the train window
The Nubian desert could seem just like endless stretches of sand, when you head through it with the train connecting Wadi Halfa to Atbara. And that's really what it is. But entering the desert so thoroughly as you do with this train, is quite rare, when entering the desert you seldom manage to penetrate it by more than some few kilometres. The Nubian desert makes up all the eastern bank of the Nile, and go on until it reaches the Red Sea. There are relatively few settlements out in the desert, which has much to to with the elevation never lower than a couple of hundred metres above sea level. With the Nile and the Red Sea doing a parallel run down south, little economical importance have been established for transportation through the desert. The only settlement out here now, Abu Hamid, would not survive without the railway.
