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| We entered Uganda on Labour day, May 1st, at the Busia border crossing and drove north to Sipi Falls. The roads were a complete surprise, the width, the smoothness and the drainage. There were even safety fences along the final section of the road. We liked the Ugandan road building and maintenance policy.Watch this space. | ||
| Sipi Falls was quite impressive and we could see the falls from the campsite. We found some climbing here, some Italians visited about 2 years ago and heavily bolted a crag near the falls. There were supposedly 23 routes there, but they are all very close together and about 20m high. We spent the afternoon doing a few routes before getting too hot and sweaty in the heat. |
Photo 1656 Sipi Falls |
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Photo 1657 Crag near Sipi Falls |
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| After Sipi Falls we moved onwards to Jinja, the town that is at ‘the Source of the Nile’. This is where the Victoria Nile flows out of Lake Victoria. There is the usual plaque and surprisingly, a memorial to Mahatma Ghandi. Some of his ashes were spread here, onto the Nile. We stayed overlooking Bujagali Falls and pottered for a day in the warmth and enjoyed the countryside. |
Photo 1678 Sunshine on the Victoria Nile |
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| From here we progressed to Kampala the capital where the traffic was hectic and we got completely lost looking for Le Petit Bistro. We found it eventually and the food was worth the wait. Kampala was very hilly which helped us as we could see across the valley to where we were trying to get to, we just had to find out how to get there. |
Photo 1684 misty morning in Kampala |
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| After a night in the city we
moved west to Fort Portal and went to visit a crater lake. We were a bit
disappointed at Lake Nkaruba, it was a lot smaller than we expected and
it was still very hot, humid and had lots of insects. We went in search of some cooler air and decided the Ruwenzories were the perfect answer. Rangoni community campsite was very friendly but on arrival we noticed we had a puncture and spent the afternoon fixing it. Luckily we managed to have it fixed before a huge thunderstorm broke right above us. There were big rumbles of thunder all around, echoing off the mountains behind. |
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Photo 1704 Banana loaded bicycle |
We tried the local food- matoke and beans. It was quite palatable and very filling. Uganda is very big on bananas, you can’t help noticing them everywhere and the most popular way of getting them to market is to carry a ridiculous number of them on a bicycle. | |
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The next morning we had our first glimpse of the Ruwenzories
and we moved south to Mbarara to get some money and fuel before going
to Lake Bunyoni. Here we relaxed for a day and looked for another puncture
but didn’t find one so put it back on and hoped. We even had a small swim
in the Lake, I am not sure that it is to be recommended, but it was very
refreshing. We thought about staying another day but two overland trucks
turned up and surrounded Nelly with tents so we left. From there we drove back into the warmth of Lake Victoria and crossed over the border to Tanzania. |
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