Now it is time to talk about the nature and landscapes between Kosti and Juba. Basically the trip is divided into three sections. First from Kosti to somewhere after the point where the Sobat river splits off. From there nearly all the way to Bor is the Sudd, the large Sudanese swamp area. From Bor onwards the landscape changes again.

From Kosti down to the Sobat the Nile is wide and the river is still crossing rather dry areas. Therefore the vegetation is mostly only around the river itself, it is low with some interspersed trees and palms. Generally the riverbanks are rather dry now, however this area, as all the others we passed through, surely look very different during the rainy season. The first new element in the landscape is only a couple of hours after Kosti, a small town situated under two hill, fittingly name Jabalain (two mountains). Just before reaching Malakal the river suddenly is lined by palm trees. Already at this point and from here onwards for the whole trip, there was big plants swimming in the water. They grow on the side of the river and I presume that they rip off with the seeds, swim further down and then grow again on the side of the river at a lower point. While it seems obvious how this plant moves down the river, I wonder why it doesn’t die out further up the river –especially as the seeds, if my interpretation that this were seeds is correct, are approximately half the size of a fist and cannot be moved by wind. Sometimes the water was practically full of these swimming plants.

Some time during the night after passing the Sobat the boat entered the Sudd.

“The Sudd is a vast swamp in southern Sudan, formed by the White Nile. The word “sudd” is derived from the Arabic word “sadd”, meaning “block” The term has come to refer to any large solid floating vegetation island or mat. The area which the swamp covers is one of the world’s largest wetlands and the largest freshwater wetland in the Nile basin. The Sudd stretches from Mongalla to just outside the Sobat confluence with the White Nile just upstream of Malakal as well as westwards along the Bahr el Ghazal. The shallow and flat inland delta lays between 5.5 and 9.5 degrees latitude North and covers an area of 500 km south to north and 200 km east to west between Mongalla in the south and Malakal in the north. Its size is highly variable, averaging over 30,000 square kilometers. During the wet season it may extend to over 130,000 km², depending on the inflowing waters, with the discharge from Lake Victoria being the main control factor of flood levels and area inundation.” (Wikipedia)

The landscape of the Sudd is dominated by the approximately two meter high reed which continues as far as the eye can see and is only rarely interrupted by small side arms of the Nile and little lakes. Being a swamp the Sudd is more absolutely flat and in a way the landscape is boring. At the same time it is completely absurd. Although it is highly repetitive, since I have never seen anything like it, it had a strange fascination to stare into this never ending green. The trip through this green takes approximately five days with the type of boat I was travelling with, but one often encounters people with canoes and sometimes even rafts. With such a method of travelling the Sudd becomes literally a never ending green hell. The feeling of isolation which this place seems to emanate was even increased by the weather. After the first day of travel we came into an area with dense for which continued for the next three days. This fog seems to be a common phenomenon in the Sudd as all people on board considered it as normal.

After approximately three days the fog ended and air was clear again and slowly the landscape changed. The reed was sometimes interrupted by other plants or even a tree here or there. After Bor however the landscape changed totally and from here for about a day was dominated by large barren areas. Finally the boat would come closer to Mangalla and from here onwards the Nile is divided any many small side arms and is lined with more and more trees, many of them Mangoes. The Nile is so small at certain points that the pusher leaves two barges in Mangalla and picks them up later. Lastly getting closer to Juba the river changes again and suddenly large boulders and treacherous little islands become a challenge for the captain. For this very last part of the journey the pusher is travelling with only one barge, leaving the other behind to pick it up an hour later.