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- Jan 29, 2025
- ☁️ 26 °C
- Altitude: 1,617 m
KenyaMukuru kwa njenga1°19’2” S 36°54’10” E
Uganda, The Pearl of Africa
January 29 in Kenya ⋅ ☁️ 26 °C
Exhausting, exciting, exhilarating and just excellent!
Uganda was a real unknown part of our travel planning as most of our thinking about a safari tour had been considering a visit to The Masai Mara in Kenya and/or The Serengeti in Tanzania. Those names had evoked everything in our imaginations about vast open spaces, wildlife and safaris.
However, in early January we decided that Uganda would be the better option given that we would be gorilla tracking in the south west. Our resulting plan was to do a self drive tour but having taken advice from an old friend who had lived and worked in the country, we decided against this.
THANK YOU SUZANNE!
Self driving would have been an absolute nightmare and we would have hated it. We met a Dutch couple halfway through our tour who were self driving and were not enjoying the experience at all. The roads, the conditions, the knowledge about where to go and when would have been impossible for us to even remotely grasp.
Instead, whilst still in Rwanda we arranged a 5 day tour of Uganda taking in various game parks and activities in an open roof jeep with an experienced driver. Bizarrely and more than a little concerned about being scammed, all of this was arranged through a conversation on WhatsApp.
The outcome was superb. We travelled from the luscious mountains of south west Uganda reaching 7,600 feet above sea level, to the national parks of Queen Elizabeth and Murchison Falls and then all the way back down to Kampala. Uganda is almost exactly the same size as the UK but we reckon that there are more miles of tarmaced roads in North Tyneside than there are in the whole of this amazing East African country.
This meant that for long stretches of our journey we were on dirt roads - usually with a decent surface but we did seem to travel on never ending, dead straight roads for hours. As with Rwanda though, the roadside views were so interesting. One mountain clinging route took us through a timber producing region where every extraction of the much used eucalyptus tree was being done manually. On another day, we went through banana central, with plantations surrounding 27 crater lakes, also up in the hills. En route to Kampala on Sunday, we drove through the pineapple producing region where rows and rows of stalls selling the fruit lined the road.
All amazing to see but the main attractions were of course the parks and the game drives and boy, did we get lucky! We took a 2 hour boat cruise on the Kazinga Channel in the northern part of QE Park and within minutes we were floating amongst hippos at rest in the water. As we pootled down the river bank we saw 2 herds of elephants, water buck, crocs, warthogs, a monitor lizard, fish eagle and most amazingly a leopard that was about to feast on a dead hippo in the water. All utterly amazing and all so quickly that it was slightly overwhelming.
We had 4 game drives in total and on an early morning drive through Murchison, we stopped alongside a dozen other safari vehicles. The drivers all stay in touch with each other and when something good is spotted they congregate quite quickly. On this occasion, it was a small pride of lions that seemed to be hunting kope, a small antelope. At a distance of 200 metres it was great to see but binoculars were required and the photos were not great. After a while, most other vehicles left but our driver talked to a park ranger, money was exchanged and we headed off road. This is normally prohibited but we were driven right up to the bushes where the pride was hiding and we watched the juveniles get jumpy as the female lion tracked the prey. There was a very young cub too who wasn’t at all perturbed by our presence. He was so cute too! We couldn’t stay there long but the experience made our day.
Murchison also allowed us to see our first giraffes. Their long necks were often silhouetted against the skyline and as they move, they really do appear prehistoric. Close up though, they are gorgeous and we spent far too long gazing at group after group of them grazing on thorny bushes. Buffalo were also everywhere in the park but out of the thousands of elephants that live there, we only saw 1 and that was just at end of our drive.
Later the same day, however, on another boat cruise, this time on The Nile itself, we saw plenty of elephants on the riverbank including a couple of youngsters messing around in the mud. It seems that every time we have seen wildlife, we have been treated to mothers and babies. This cruise took us up to the waterfalls that give the park its name and we also drove to the top of the falls the next day. The falls only descend about 40 meters but the gap is just 6 meters wide for the whole of The Nile to pass through. The noise, volume of water and spray were extraordinary.
Our tour organiser had also arranged for us to go chimp tracking in another park and to visit a rhino sanctuary. The later didn’t appear too exciting but it allowed us to tick off the Big Five and it was really interesting to actually understand the work that is being done in Uganda to protect numbers and return creatures to the wild. The chimp tracking was excellent too with a real close up view of some of the chimps that have been habituated to humans. Kibale National Park has the highest chimp population in the world with only a small number that are tracked.
Interspersed with wildlife and national parks were the overnight accommodations in game lodges. Without realising quite what we had booked, we found ourselves in 3 quite high end lodges with stunning views, enormous rooms (seriously, one was bigger than the flat we were living in for 6 months last year), with great food and wonderful service. Slight shame that we we were unable to spend much time in the hotels though as most days started with a 0530 alarm call and a 0630 departure.
And that was it - probably our one and only ever safari tour and we are so pleased to have chosen Uganda. Our guide/driver, Jasper, was so incredibly proud of his country and knew so much about the nature, the history and the changes that are occurring in Uganda. For example, recent oil extractions around Hoima have already transformed the north west of the country and Jasper was a great narrator for these kind of stories.
Uganda has a 10 national parks and we barely scratched the surface. Jasper reckons our 5 day tour would often take 15! However, the variety of landscapes, the unfailing friendliness of everybody we met, not to mention crossing the equator last Wednesday, has made this part of our trip utterly memorable.
Uganda doesn’t do a great deal to promote its own tourism profile but The Pearl of Africa is to be highly, highly recommended.Read more
Traveler I wish I had been with you both ,absolutely amazing xx
Traveler It was, you and Robert must go one day. 💖
Traveler Just amazing. Looks so beautiful. Glad all going so well. X
Traveler Haha, we are also going to do a post on our small injuries and mishaps soon! X