This lazy, market town surrounded by desert on both sides just happens to be the largest town between Atbara and Dongola. It also happens to be the perfect place to base yourself to explore the remains of the Napatan kingdom of Kush.
Jebel Barkal
Dubbed the “Holy Mountain”, Jebel Barkal or Gebel Barkal is only 2km from the center of Karima, dominating a large bend of the Nile River, in the region called Nubia.
The ruins around Jebel Barkal include at least 13 temples and 3 palaces were first described by European explorers in the 1820s.
Nuri
Nuri is a place in modern Sudan on the west side of the Nile, near the Fourth Cataract Nuri is situated about 15 km north of Sanam, and 10 km from Jebel Barkal.
The pyramids at Nuri were built at the peak of Nubian power after their heroic march north to not only cast off their Egyptian rulers, but to conquer most of ancient Egypt itself, the pyramids are today neglected and have barely been explored. Anyone that makes their way out here will almost certainly have the site to themselves.
El-Kurru
El-Kurru was one of the royal cemeteries used by the Nubian royal family. Reisner excavated the royal pyramids. Most of the pyramids date to the early part of the Kushite period, from Alara of Nubia to King Nastasen. The area is divided into three parts by two wadis.
Petrified Forest
Just north of El-Kurru a petrified wood of fossilized remains of terrestrial vegetation can be found.
Ghazali
One of the most intriguing and most captivating archaeological sites in Sudan is surprisingly situated not at the shore of life-giving Nile. It is located in Wadi Abu Dom at a distance of about fifteen km from the river bank. This is the place where the Makurians built a monastery of a size of St. Catherine monastery in Sinai. The place visited by all of the famous travelers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century once like Richard Lepsius, Louis Maurice Adolphe Linant de Bellefonds, John Gardner Wilkinson, Pierre Trêmaux, or Ugo Monneret de Villard. The Ghazali monastery is a site of the utmost importance for the studies on history of Sudan especially in Makurian period but also for local economy as one of the best tourist destinations in the country. Peter Shinnie, Neville Chittick and Sayed Nigm ed Din Sherif on behalf of the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, at that point of time working under the name of Sudan Antiquities Service, started the excavation of the site in the 1950’es. In two archaeological seasons they cleared the church, refectories and several other rooms.