The restaurant on the 16th floor of the Corinthia Hotel in Khartoum affords an incredible view of the spot where the White and Blue Niles converge. The White Nile flows from the great lakes of equatorial Africa, with the shorter Blue Nile, whose remotest source is the Felege Ghion spring in the Ethiopian highlands, contributing nearly 90% of the water carried by the Nile proper.
The slow, sweeping waters through Khartoum contrast with the darting traffic at its edges, both passage of the river and the country’s history marked by a series of bridges — from the bascule 1909 Blue Nile Road and Railway Bridge completed by the Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company and the blue steel truss Omdurman Bridge (also known as the Redemption Bridge or the Old White Nile Bridge) built by Dorman Long in 1926, 30 years before independence, to the modern Tuti suspension bridge opposite the hotel.