We have only heard a few accounts of people crossing the recently opened land border from Egypt-Sudan. Has anyone passed through in the last few months?
Thanks!

Have a look here
http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...sudan-63126-17

Passed through about a month ago with a motorbike headed north - 2hrs on Sudan Side, 4 hours on Egyptian side, fake Carnet about $150 in fees and baksheesh.... pretty much totally sucks.

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

fake carnet?
You should consider yourself very fortunate to not be rotting in an Egyptian prison.

Charlie

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Unimog U500 w/Unicat

definitely! all sorts of stuff to feel lucky for on this trip

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

I've been told this is a truck route, was it busy? Boring hard top all the way?

yep - perfect tarmac north of khartoum hardly any traffic at all though. border had some trucks but not very busy. most everyone just gets a two week transit visa, so not too much time to muck around in the desert

the fixer Mazar Mahir is a great dude on the Wadi Halfa side who will put u up at his house and serve u breakfast. He even found me a half used frot tire which I was in desperate need of!

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

Thanks Gary, enjoy your website.

We crossed this border just a week ago with two motorbikes.

The Sudanese side war pretty difficult, but we managed to do it in four hours without using a 'fixer'. But we did meet Mazar nonetheless, as he is referred to as 'clearer' at the border and you need a 'clearer' for some steps along the process. I worked with another 'clearer' first as only the clearer has and can fill in one of the forms you need and eventually Mazar was involved as well (he is basically the only one who speaks decent English). But I did not pay him (and he did not ask for it) because I acted as if he was just another official who was there in his official function as 'clearance officer'.
Nobody asked for a bribe, but at several stages, fees were asked from us (traffic police: 140,- Sudanese Pounds per motorbike and a departure fee to get your passport stamped). We could talk ourselves out of most of them and ended up paying 108,- Sudanese Pounds per motorcycle for customs (which was reduced from 158,- after some protest from my side*, but after that they would not budge).
That was all. So if you don't mind spending quite a while at the border or - as I do - even find a certain pleasure in dealing with 'such stuff', it is definitely doable without using a 'fixer' - and you can save quite a bit of money.

* just as an explanation: I did not want to pay all these fees for exiting Sudan, as we had entered Sudan coming from Ethiopia without paying anything, there wasn't even a 'traffic police' and the process was smooth and easy: immigration, get passport stamped, customs, get carnets stamped and we were good to go.

At the Egyptian side everything was extremely smooth, well-organized and professional. It was expensive, though (but we knew that before - and there was no talking ourselves out of any of the fees). But we got (and needed) receipts for everything we paid and nobody asked for 'bakshish'. We did not need a 'fixer' and I don't see why you would work with one if you have your paperwork in order (which we had).

Here is what we paid (prices given are per person and/or motorbike in LE, Egyptian Pounds):

100,- to enter the border (30 pp, 50 for the bike, 5 per hour - and they just assumed it would take us 4 hours, which was not that far from the truth)

60,- to get our bags and boxes searched (x-rayed), we had to present the receipt upon leaving the border post

0,- to get our passports stamped (but we already had a visa)

522,- customs fee (it's good for a stay up to 3 months and we were told it's the same for every vehicle, so it does not make a difference if you're on a motorbike, in a car or a truck)

60,- for the third-party insurance (no idea if they'd accept an international insurance should you happen to have one)

55,- for the license plates and the Egyptian registration

... the whole process was clearly structured, everybody knew exactly what to do and where to send us next (most of the time to the office next door). It took some time and cost a lot of money, but all in all it was one of the more pleasant border crossings, because there are no people accosting you, hassling you, wanting to 'help' you or change money for you (there's a bank at the border post where you can do that, no ATM, though).

The ferry to Abu Simbel we were on took approx 40min and cost us 50,- in total for the two of us and our two motorbikes. And we even got tea! :-) It seems there are different ferries with different prices, though.

We had already gotten our visas in Khartoum because we had heard that you can't get them at the landborder. I think it's a good idea to do that anyway, because it cost us only 160 Sudanese Pounds (approx $16) as opposed to $25 upon arrival (if you take the ferry from Wadi Halfa to Assuan or fly in) and you can extend it easily in Aswan, Luxor, Cairo, Alexandria and on the Sinai for only 11.45 LE ($1.60) for another 3 months. (We only got a month in Khartoum, starting from the date of entry into Egypt.)

Only problem: our vehicle registration expires on April 1st (we entered on March 8th) and we only found out about that later (the registration is in Arabic). We hadn't asked about it at the border, because the customs was for three months and we'd assumed that so would be our registration. It's not. So you might want to check if they can issue an extended registration already at the border (if you wish to spend more time in the country). Because from what we've heard so far, you can only get an extension in Cairo, at the airport (at 'car customs') - which we will now have to do. We were told in Luxor, though, that you could also do it in Aswan, because that's the region that's given on your new Egyptian license plate.

@Phil53: it's a very good, thus boring road all the way from Khartoum to Aswan.
It might be a truck route, but when we were there (some two weeks ago), it wasn't very busy and absolutely no problem.