South Sudan · SS

Gondokoro

Gondokoro is a quiet island and former river station on the east bank of the White Nile in Central Equatoria, South Sudan, about 1,200 kilometres south of Khartoum and within today's Juba County. On the map it is now a modest, largely defunct locality, but on the page of history it looms large: for most of the 19th century it marked the very limit to which ships could sail up the Nile from Egypt, and the point at which the road to the heart of Africa became an overland one. That single fact made Gondokoro the great jumping-off stage of the Victorian race to find the source of the Nile. Ivory traders, Austrian missionaries, explorer-rescuers and famous travellers all gathered on its banks, and it was here, in 1863, that the mystery of the river's origins was effectively handed from one expedition to another. To visit or simply to locate Gondokoro today is to stand at one of the most storied crossroads in the exploration of Africa.