It is dominated by the might Nile and reaches from the Sahara’s expanses to lush equatorial forest, but Sudan’s name is more closely associated with civil war and famine than with natural wonders.

The landscape of Sudan is very big and very flat. In the equatorial south of the country, hardwood forests and Nile floodplains gradually give way to the watery maze of the Sudd, Africa’s biggest marsh- it is the size of France. Form here, the White Nile flows through increasingly dry land until it is joined by the Blue Nile at Khartoum and reaches the stony deserts of the north.

The flat emptiness of Sudan’s northern deserts is punctuated with the shock of the wide Nile and tiny Nubian villages. The Nile is at its most impressive at its confluence in Khartoum, but the Blue and White branches are actually different shade of brown. Several mountain groups rise form the plains. Off the Red Sea coast lie the hidden beauties of coral reefs.