Tuti Island sits in the middle of the Nile at the exact spot where the Blue and White Niles meet. It is small — about eight square kilometres — and inhabited by a community of around 5,000 people, most of them Mahas Nubians who have farmed the island for generations. Until 2009 the only way across was a rope-pulled ferry; the Tuti Bridge from Khartoum has since opened the island up, but it has kept its village character.
Walking across the bridge and into Tuti is the easiest way in Khartoum to feel you have left the city. There are no tall buildings, dirt lanes wind between mud-brick houses, and small plots of vegetables run down to the river. The northern edge looks out at Omdurman and the southern edge faces central Khartoum — a strange double perspective on the capital from inside the river itself.