“She said to go ahead and apply.” That was the response from my longtime visa consultant, Annette, after she called the Sudanese embassy in Washington, DC and mentioned that I was the founder of an NGO that does humanitarian work in Africa.

I stared at my phone for a moment, unsure whether this was good news.

At the beginning of 2024, I was mapping out the final stretch of an unusual personal goal: visiting every country in the world. Only a handful remained. North Korea was still closed. Sudan was in the middle of a devastating civil war.

Most travellers, understandably, were staying far away, and those who still wanted to go could not get a visa. But a small window had opened into Port Sudan, the Red Sea city that had become the Sudan’s de facto capital after Khartoum descended into chaos. Fighting reportedly hadn’t reached the city itself. Technically, it was possible to go. The real question was whether I should.

I had travelled to difficult places, previous war zones— Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen — but never somewhere that was in the middle of an active war. It wasn’t fear that unsettled me most. It was the discomfort of stepping into a place where people’s lives were collapsing while I was travelling the world, trying to achieve my goal of visiting 193 UN member states. A feeling of guilt for my life against those who are truly suffering.

Sudan had become one of those crises the world seemed to absorb only in passing: a headline briefly noticed before disappearing beneath the day’s headlines, wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The capital, Khartoum, had been completely destroyed. Tens of thousands were dead, and millions were displaced. Yet outside humanitarian circles, almost nobody seemed to be talking about it. The media had decided that the tragedy unfolding in real time in Sudan was not important enough.

But a few weeks later, after my visa was approved, I told myself that I was unsure of my trip to Afghanistan, only a year after the Taliban took over, a few years earlier. Yet it was a highlight of my journey. So, I boarded the Egypt Air flight from Cairo to Port Sudan, still wondering if I was making a mistake.

Within an hour of landing, I was in the backseat of a taxi with my guide, Khalid, driving through crowded streets overflowing with displaced families “The country is in chaos,” he told me quietly, “but people still have to survive.”

Khalid was soft-spoken and gentle, carrying himself with the calm dignity of someone trying not to burden others with his pain. Before the war, he had lived in Khartoum and worked as a painter. When fighting erupted between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces, soldiers ransacked his home and destroyed much of his artwork.

Now he had the rare opportunity to earn some money for his family by guiding one of the only tourists to enter Sudan in months.

As we walked through Port Sudan’s markets together, I noticed NGO logos everywhere — the Red Cross, Relief International, UN agencies — signs of a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding largely out of view. Men crowded around outdoor coffee stands, drinking strong Sudanese coffee mixed with ginger. Refugees slept in unfinished buildings. Entire families had fled Khartoum with little more than what they could carry.

As the trip went on, my focus began to shift. I had arrived in Sudan curious about a forgotten crisis, but more than anything, I now wanted to be fully present to the devastating reality so many people had endured. I couldn’t offer aid or solutions. I couldn’t stop the war or rebuild shattered lives. But I could bear witness with a caring heart. And somehow, that felt like something.

Just outside Port Sudan, Khalid brought me to a sprawling UNHCR refugee camp sheltering thousands displaced from Darfur and Khartoum. Under the searing afternoon sun, women stood patiently in long lines holding metal dishes, waiting for what was likely a small ration of grain to feed their families.

Then I looked closer. These women, despite everything, were dressed in radiant, flowing gowns and brilliantly coloured headscarves, as if walking a catwalk rather than standing in a food line. Their elegance felt defiant, almost transcendent. I couldn’t reconcile the desperation of their circumstances with the pride and grace with which they carried themselves. It was as if dignity was not merely part of survival here — it was survival. And it was utterly breathtaking.

The stories I heard throughout Sudan — of homes destroyed, families separated, entire lives erased overnight — left little doubt that suffering had touched nearly everyone. Yet what stayed with me most was not only the hardship but also the resilience beneath it.

I couldn’t fully grasp the scale of destruction in Sudan, nor understand how a catastrophe affecting millions could feel so absent from global conversation. The world seemed largely disengaged while outside powers continued to supply weapons and back rival sides.

No one seemed to ask the obvious question: Why didn’t the world care? Perhaps because apathy demands nothing, while caring — especially when one feels powerless — can be overwhelming. Still, I realised there was a difference between changing the world and refusing to look away from it.

Before leaving Sudan, I agreed to help Khalid get several of his paintings safely out of the country so they could be sold by an Italian friend in Europe to raise money for his family. One watercolour stopped me cold: faceless figures dissolving into a city consumed by chaos, as though war itself was erasing people from existence.

“How much?” I asked him. He hesitated. “Maybe $40.” I paid him five times that amount, embarrassed by how little he valued his extraordinary work after everything he had survived. Today, that painting hangs in my home.

Most people think of travel as a form of escape. Sudan reminded me that sometimes the deepest purpose of travel is the opposite: to move closer to realities the world would rather ignore.

I went to Sudan hoping to better understand a crisis. I left, realising how dangerously easy it is to look away.