Odyssey to the Nile

Having felt like we didn’t do too much sightseeing in Uganda, we decided that we needed an adventure! And so we were off to Jinja, where the river Nile starts.

Well, kind of… I mean it did take us 3 tries to do it between waking up late and the rainy weather but eventually we did get there and we certainly got that adventure.

Right from the start we knew that starting from Entebbe it would be tough to do it in one day as first you need to take a 1hr “taxi” to Kampala and then another one which in theory takes 2,5 hrs to Jinja but we decided to do it anyway. YOLO right?

The first taxi ride, taxis in Uganda being the same 14 seater which is called matatu or dala dala in Kenya or Tanzania, went off without a hitch. We got to the taxi by boda boda and drove off immediately after sitting comfortably in a vehicle only 50% full due to Covid restrictions. It seemed like a great start and so did the fact that at the Kampala bus depot we had a bunch of people helping us get to the next taxi spot.

People in Uganda were extremely nice and seemed to just want to help us all the time. Back in Tanzania we were still apprehensive and in Kenya we often got vibes that people wanted something in return but by the time we got to Uganda we were far more relaxed in crowded situations and were a lot more open to take in the generosity of people around us.

Regardless, we still managed to sit in the wrong taxi in Kampala and after waiting for 20m for it to fill up, we found out we had been wasting our time. Oh well, on to the next taxi we went…

Once more we had to wait for the taxi to fill up with passengers before driving off. Even with Uganda only allowing taxis to be 50% full (and with operators actually respecting the rule) it took us some time until we were ready to go and suddenly we had spent over an hour in Kampala just waiting for our taxi to be ready while all sorts of street vendors tried to sell us loudspeakers, chocolate bars and memory sticks...

Right, we thought as we drove off, it is a little late but we will still manage!

Weeeelll… turns out the road between Kampala and Jinja is the same one that connects Uganda and Kenya and traffic was beyond horrendous. Our 2,5 hour ride, even with taking shortcuts, cutting traffic and performing all kinds of questionable maneuvers on the road, turned into a 4,5 hour trip through all kinds of tortuous roads in the midday sun. All of this would have been difficult enough by itself but when you live through these bumpy roads in need of using the bathroom then the trip becomes nothing short of memorable!

Famished and tired, by the time we got to Jinja, all we wanted was to grab a snack and use the toilet at the first decent restaurant we could find. This of course led to yet another tale.

You see, the toilet at the restaurant was across an inner hall in the other building and without a properly functioning lock and, though the menu offered quite the variety of items, it seemed that everything we ordered was unavailable and eventually all we could have were french fries and juice. Frustrating but common in Africa...

Having done the best we could given the circumstances, we decided to try to find a place that offered boat tours through the Nile. We hopped on boda boda and told them to head to a place that seemed promising by the river but… they didn’t seem to have any idea where it was and after first taking us to the bus station and later stopping to ask other boda boda drivers about our intended destination I decided to intervene and change destination.

During the ride my driver had told me he could take us to Bujagali falls for 10,000 Shilling, a place our hosts had told us about, and after seeing us getting nowhere fast I decided to tell A that this looked like our best alternative. We were on our way soon after.

The thing is, we didn’t really know how far the falls were, if they really had boat rides or… much of anything other than our hosts telling us it was a good place to visit.

Turns out there is a good 20 to 30m bike ride down dirt roads to get to Bujagali. That means that for 30m you are speeding on a boda boda through traffic, bumpy roads and red dust raised by passing trucks while hoping not to eat any bugs flying by. It was exhilarating!

It had taken us the better part of 7 hrs but finally we made it to Bujagali falls with our skins and our clothes covered in red dirt as if we had war paintings.

Well, we made it near where Bujagali falls used to be since the actual falls haven’t existed since the Ugandan government built a hydro dam decades ago. Regardless, we managed to find and negotiate a boat tour through the Nile for half the price and with a great deal of satisfaction rode down the river Nile.

Though we did not actually see the river source, we were both ecstatic to be riding down this amazing river and seeing the world float by after so many hiccups.

Even the party group which joined us on the boat did not manage to put a dent in our feeling of success as we saw the amazing beauty of the river, the fishermen going about their business and the many species of birds either fishing or hanging around the river. A truly majestic sight which was only amplified by the knowledge that we were at the very start of the epic journey of a river that covers thousands of miles all the way to the Mediterranean sea.

Sadly, all good things come to an end and instead of dropping us off at Jinja like we had agreed, the boat left us by the road some ways out of town after a fair deal of protesting by A. Annoyed but not discouraged, we made our way as fast as we could by boda boda to the nearest taxi park that could take us to Kampala.

You see, it was close to 5pm and, with a 7 pm curfew in effect and with a taxi ride back to Kampala taking at best 2,5 hrs, we were already risking being stuck in the capital after curfew.

By our calculations, by the time we drove off to Kampala, there was a chance we would only be mildly after the 7pm deadline and had hoped there would still be late buses making their way back. Maybe.

But, as with most things that day, we were nowhere near on time and as we approached Kampala the traffic became horrendous once more and, as the night fell, literally nobody seemed to care about the curfew. Nobody!

During our first visit to Kampala we had been impressed by how moderate traffic there was but as it turns out, it was because it was a Sunday which is when most people are not around. This time, traffic was murder even after the official curfew time and, even with police managing traffic on the streets, we didn’t make it to the taxi station until 9 pm.

Sadly... it wasn’t the taxi station we needed...

This left us with the option to either quickly go to the right station to find a very late taxi to Entebbe or to use the last few MB of internet we had in our package to search for a hotel in Kampala.

Fortune favours the brave and after risking it with a late taxi, we managed to hop on one of the very last ones at the station and get back to Entebbe close to 11pm where, once again, there were boda boda defying the curfew and ready to take us to our hosts. Finally...

Africa is a place that begs you to search for adventures and ours to Jinja was eventually the last one we had in the continent during our round the world trip. When I think of it, we struggled with transportation, got in the wrong bus, got stuck in traffic, were frustrated with food choices and toilet privacy. We then proceeded to not be sure where to go, stumble onto the exact thing we wanted and at the end of the day successfully returned home by blind luck. It was like encapsulating our entire trip in a day of metaphors!

What an odyssey of a day!