Khartoum is both easy and difficult to get around. It is easy in that much of the city is laid out on a grid, with long straight roads and the airport and Nile as easy reference places. It is difficult in that the city or indeed the 3 cities are very spread out, making walking a long and tiring option.
Maps are hard to come by, but Google Earth offers some good high-resolution images.
By Minibus
Minibuses are the cheapest way to get around Khartoum, especially between the three cities. There are easily thousands of minibuses and seeing all of them gather near the Great Mosque and Souk al-Arabi is a sight to behold. They are however quite complicated to use. None of them bear destination signs and you will have to be able to speak a little Arabic with their conductors to determine which minibus to take. They are also always packed to the brim. Fares are always less that SDG 1, even cross-river.
Most of the minibuses leave from the square near the Great Mosque Mesjid al-Kabir or nearby in Khartoum proper.
By ship
There are no ferry services between the three cities as they are well connected by road bridges.
There is a ferry service between Khartoum proper and Tuti Island, a rural islet in the middle of the Blue Nile. In Khartoum, boats leave from the river bank along Nile Street opposite the Friendship Hall to the west of the city center. A ferry also runs between Tuti and Omdurman except on Fridays
By Three-Wheeled Taxis
Called "bajaj" like in India or "raksha", they are cheaper than taxis but more expensive than buses so less than 5 SDG per trip. They are best used for short trips within each of Khartoum's three cities. It is better to use taxis or minibuses if you have to cross the Nile to travel between the three cities.
By car
Describing Khartoum's traffic as chaotic is a bit of an understatement. The current economic boom has seen many more cars on the road, although driving attitudes have not changed, resulting in almost comical chaos at intersections. As Khartoum is laid out in a grid, there are many intersections for cars from all directions to barge in to fight for space. Having said that, the slow speed of vehicles ensures that they are very few major accidents, at least in the city. If you are not used to such driving conditions, it is better to resort to taxis.
Car hire is available and costs a bit above the African average, around 150 SDG per day for a Corolla, and 300 SDG for a 4x4 with compulsory driver. However if you want to head off in to the desert the costs mount further, as the 100 km is standard, and then its 1 SDG per additional kilometre, hence a trip to the Meroe pyramids adds 400 SDG to your costs. Fuel, however, is cheap, at around 1.8 SDG per litre March 2008. âLimousineâ is the Arabic for car hire â try along Airport Road or Ibed Khetim Road east of the airport for car hire places.