Globalti
Legendary Member
I'm quite pleased with this picture, which I snapped yesterday in the perfume souk in Omdurman, Sudan. Generally people, especially women, are quite camera shy so you have to be quick and discrete and get the pic before you are spotted and greeted effusively as "khawaja" - "white man".
The wood is chopped up into flakes or sawdust and mixed with perfume oil and sugar syrup then dropped onto burning charcoal, giving off clouds of white perfumed smoke that fills people's homes and offices. Buying the household incense or "bakhour" is as important a job as buying the day's bread or milk. The word perfume comes from the Latin "per fume" meaning "through smoke"; the Sudan is the cradle of much of the world's civilisation and perfume use is thought to have originated here; the Sudanese and Egyptians certainly love their perfume - even the men douse themselves with it, men's or women's, they don't care, but it has to be heavy, sweet and oriental.
Anyway, cycling - in two days here I have not seen a single cyclist. Not one. I can only assume that cities are too dangerous and that city-dwellers see cycling as peasant's transport. For leisure cycling, the Strava Heatmap shows somebody travelling through Sudan and one or two cyclists using Strava around the residential areas of the city: http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#10/32.44881/15.60055/blue/bike
The wood is chopped up into flakes or sawdust and mixed with perfume oil and sugar syrup then dropped onto burning charcoal, giving off clouds of white perfumed smoke that fills people's homes and offices. Buying the household incense or "bakhour" is as important a job as buying the day's bread or milk. The word perfume comes from the Latin "per fume" meaning "through smoke"; the Sudan is the cradle of much of the world's civilisation and perfume use is thought to have originated here; the Sudanese and Egyptians certainly love their perfume - even the men douse themselves with it, men's or women's, they don't care, but it has to be heavy, sweet and oriental.
Anyway, cycling - in two days here I have not seen a single cyclist. Not one. I can only assume that cities are too dangerous and that city-dwellers see cycling as peasant's transport. For leisure cycling, the Strava Heatmap shows somebody travelling through Sudan and one or two cyclists using Strava around the residential areas of the city: http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#10/32.44881/15.60055/blue/bike
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