OverlandSphere
Overland Travel, Expedition & Adventure Information for 4x4, motorcycle and truck overlanders
Part 2: Iganga Hospital is a 200-bed district general hospital run, and largely funded by the government. It has male, female, paediatric and maternity wards, an outpatients department, pharmacy, laboratory, x-ray, ultrasound and an operating theatre. The gate opened straight out onto the main road and once inside there was always a great crowd shifting around the white buildings. Clusters…
Part 1: Children on the DRC border March 13 2013 Six feet in a drumroll syncopate with the downpour, rasping on broad-leaf snares. In an instant, we meet under haphazard semaphore, tumbling shrieks cut short. Each of us receiving a face; a frozen, flash photograph; glossy and sleek, panting clouds. Charging steep, you lead the game. Mouth set in mirth,…
The officials on the border gave us a pretty easy ride into Uganda (each border seems to have got easier as we’ve headed further south) and didn’t even bother to look at the car, so we were able to make our way to Jinja the same day. It’s the first major town past the border, but we were particularly excited…
A short blog to let you know that we have survived Christmas & New Year. What a great couple of weeks! Mum, Steve & Vics came to visit us in Uganda, much to the consternation of many of their friends & family who believed that they were crazy to visit such a dangerous place. Well hopefully they will be able…
The border crossing into Uganda was simple with the usual road tax charged in these African countries. We decided to ride to Jinja which is where Nile or White Nile supposedly starts…I won’t get into that because it seems people take the location of the Nile source pretty seriously. We ended up camping out at the Adrift Camp which had…
1000 nights on the road! That deserves blog just in its own right… so here’s a few facts & figures about the trip. A list…..courtesy of my sad spread sheet! ✤ Departure date: 17 August 2009. Those of you who can do sums will perhaps have worked out that if our departure is correct we should have spent more than…
A little event today justifies a tiny blog of its own… This morning, on our way out of Bwindi, Clive & decided to visit Bwindi Lodge to see if it would be affordable to book for January when Vic & I come back for our gorilla trek. As I was walking down the steps to the lodge I saw a…
It’s raining. Quite a lot. But then Uganda is lush, lush, lush so I guess that rain must be part of the equation. We have been in Uganda for nearly a week & are loving it. Very beautiful, very friendly & definitely a good place to spend Christmas with friends & family. More about that later. On our last few…
We really took our time and packed up and then headed out as well. The border was only about 150kms away and the roads were bad, the ruts in the roads meant you really had to have your wits about you in order not to lose it on these roads. We passed a group of about 5 overloaded trucks carrying…
Sessee Islands Apart from the journey getting there, it’s all worth it. We found a great campsite at a resort and spent two days staring at Lake Victoria which is simply spectacular. Along with the great lake is the whitest beach sand and bird life abound. We whipped up a great poitjie on our last night as well as a…
A dream come to….Lake Victoria!!! Wow, the beach was amazing, we loved it here!!!…
During planning we had been looking forward to visiting Uganda with its big green forests and position on Lake Victoria. However as Uganda came closer our thoughts and plans changed and we opted to spend only a week or so there. We decided this for a few reasons: 1) Uganda had increased its National Park prices quite dramatically to the…
Population in 2011: 34.5 million (Source: UN Human Development Report 2011) Capital city: Kampala Official language/s: English, Luganda (Source: Lonely Planet) Currency: Uganda Shilling (UWS) (Source: www.xe.com/ucc/) Famous for: Source of the White Nile and gorillas (Source: Various) HDI ranking 2011: 161 of 187 (Source:UN Human Development Report 2011) GDP per capita (PPP$) 2009: 1217 (Source: UN Human Development Report 2011) HIV prevalence rate (15-49 years): 6.5% (Source: www.avert.org) Population living in…
Chimp trekking was awesome except for the wild Germans in our group pushing everyone over trying to take the prime spots. Got these after having to shoot through holes in the bushes while everyone clambered over each other to get better shots View from the crater lakes around Kibale NP at mid-night…
This park is right on the Sudanese border and takes a day to travel there including an overnight stop, which we spent at a South African owned campsite called Fugly’s based in Kitgum. The last bit of the oad to Kidepo was slow-going but we managed and arrived there in the afternoon. Not much longer after that we whipped out…
One word to some up Murchison………..Poaching and nobody cares. You tell the rangers and they don’t seem to take an interest. We wild camped on the delta, 30km from the nearest legal person in the park, which was awesome. They say you need a guard for the animals but you need it for the poachers!!!! We talked them out of…
So quickly out of Kenya and into a new dimension. Can I just say, every country you drive into looks better and better as you work your way South. That’s why S.A. is the best We have only just arrived but driving into the country already feels so good, everything is green and the Nile is so clean and has…
WOW, WOW, WOW!!!!!!! Magical, we got there in the rainy season which is the worst time and loved it. I recon if you come here between December and April it would be unbelievable. Highlight would definitely be the Lion in our camp!!!! Drive in Kidepo Thunderstorm in the distance Mr Lion Fighting our way out Fighting our way out…
We made contact with Build Africa, our chosen charity, when we reached Nairobi and asked if we could visit a school in need of support in terms of funding. They were a great NGO to deal with and they set up a day where Maryanne, Field Location Manager for Build Africa, took us to Chura Primary School in the district…
Some of these pics were taken whilst we were on the road over the first few days in Uganda. We stayed a few nights at the Haven in Jinja and enjoyed a bit of luxury before hitting the parks in Uganda. Blog writing View from Lunch at The Haven on the Nile Sunset from our bungalow on the NIle…
Honestly, how stupid would it be to drive into one of the most criminal cities in the world and stay the night with a random stranger? Pretty stupid right? Well, that’s just what we did. I posted our travel plans just beyond the end of the world, where the phone cables had just about reached, and logged in to CouchSurfing.…
We passeren de grens tussen Kenia en Uganda bij het plaatsje Suam. Eenmaal aan de grens blijkt het voordeel van een kleine grensovergang; alles gaat lekker vlot. Niemand doet moeilijk en binnen de kortste keren staan we in Uganda. Bij de Ugandese post ontmoeten we Pieter Cooke, een Zuid-Afrikaan die voor de Nile breweries werkt en de lokale bevolking in…
No Jinja is not a town with loads of Jinja’s but a town on the source of the Nile. There are no words to describe the beauty of this place. I have fallen in love with this area and really didn’t want to leave. This is why I will be going back to Uganda before heading to Ethiopia. I stayed…
Uganda was definitely the highlight of my trip. I have had so many meetings and adventures it is almost impossible to tell you all about them.SO the border crossing from Rwanda into Uganda was somewhat interesting. I was driving on a nice tar road after travelling up north through the Akagera National Park to the border. We arrived at a…