Where to Stay in Dongola, Northern

What is Dongola known for?

Dongola is the Nile's administrative anchor in northern Sudan, the capital of Northern State and the point where the Cairo to Cape Town highway crosses this stretch of the river. Its name travelled further than the town. British regiments racing boats up the Nile in the eighteen-eighties gave the word to dongola racing, and Dongola Road turns up in Bristol, Tottenham, and Ayr because of what happened here.

What are the main landmarks in Dongola?

The Nile is the sight here, and the desert on either side of it. Old Dongola lies upstream on the opposite bank, deserted now but once the capital of the Christian kingdom of Makuria, and it is the reason visitors come to this stretch of river at all. The town itself is a nineteenth-century foundation.

Red brick is said to have given it its name, since the houses here were built of it while the towns around used mud.

What is the history of Dongola?

The Christian kingdom of Makuria ruled this region from Old Dongola until the middle of the fourteenth century, after which a smaller kingdom there was absorbed into the Islamic Funj Sultanate in the sixteenth. By the eighteen-twenties that old town stood virtually abandoned. The present Dongola is a Mamluk foundation: driven out of Egypt by Muhammad Ali Pasha, they reached this region in 1812 and made their capital at a small town called Maragha, which grew into Dongola Urdu, the new Dongola.

They did not keep it long. Muhammad Ali Pasha invaded Sudan in 1820 and the Mamluks fled south, and the Egyptians made Dongola a provincial capital until the Mahdist revolt. Kitchener took it back in 1896 and turned it into a British-Egyptian army base.

Where is Dongola?

Dongola stands on the banks of the Nile in northern Sudan, with the Sahara on both sides and the river the only reason for settlement in any direction. Old Dongola lies upstream on the opposite bank. The cultivable ground is a thin strip along the water, which is why the town is long rather than wide and why Northern State's population clusters where it does.

What is the climate of Dongola?

Dongola has a hot desert climate, sitting in the Sahara among the hottest, sunniest, and driest country anywhere. Heat is the constant. Even January, the coolest month, is warm by any standard, and the rest of the year runs far above it, so the Nile rather than any rainfall is what makes the place habitable.

How do you get to Dongola?

The Cairo to Cape Town highway, the trans-African route, runs through Dongola, and that road carries most arrivals from Egypt to the north and the Sudanese interior to the south. The Nile is the older way. River traffic served this stretch long before the highway, and the crossing here is still what ties the two banks of Northern State together.