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Unlike the European explorers obsessed with finding the source of the great Nile, our journey along the White Nile begins at the source and works its way north to the junction of the White and Blue Niles. The White Nile undergoes many changes as it moves north to Khartoum.
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Starting as snowmelt and spring water, the streams and creeks gather strength into small rivers. The source of the Nile is from two different area: streams in the high mountain chains of Rwanda and the hills of Burundi, and the Great Rift Valley lakes in Uganda, Tanzania, and the Congo. Whatever the initial source, along the way the water travels down waterfalls and pools into the lakes of either Edward and Albert or Victoria. Once the major source water of the White Nile converges just north of Lake Albert, it travels into southern Sudan. Here it changes dramatically. The once fast-moving water slows to an almost near halt as it spreads out in the marshy, flat Sudd. Some of the water evaporates into the air here to be rained out somewhere else. The water that makes it out of the Sudd is much slower than that which entered. A clear river channel forms again and the White Nile makes it to the junction of the two branches of the Nile at Khartoum.
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