Wednesday 29 November 2017. Photos.
Highlights: Border crossing to Uganda

Today we travelled from Eldoret (Kenya) to Kampala (Uganda) a distance of around 370 kms but a trip took over 12 hours :(. We left our campsite at Eldoret at 6 am on the dot, meaning breakfast was at 5.15 am and packing up commenced at 4.45 am.

I still finding the greenery of the landscape in this area to be amazing. Lush green everywhere. As we moved from Kenya to Uganda the agriculture started changing from tea and bananas to sugar crane, bananas, rice and carrots with Uganda being 70% covered in water and being in a rainy climate they farm for products needing lots of regular water if not submerged.

At the Kenya / Uganda border I faced my first obstacle of the trip. I should have organised an East African Tourist Visa which costs $100 USD. Instead I went for Kenyan eVisa, costing $50 USD, and planned to get Ugandan Visa at the border costing $50 USD which total would have been the same. What I didn’t realise is there was an option to visit Rwanda from Lake Bunyoni and the East African Tourist Visa includes Rwanda but getting a separate Rwandan visa would be a problem.

So I decided to apply for the East African Tourist Visa at the border. The Ugandan Immigration offical wasn’t happy with me, stating I should have applied for the East African visa on landing in Kenya. The interesting thing is they have lots of posters up promoting these visa and they have the visa certificate in stock and the only people who could be asking for this visa at this border would be in my position. Still I ended up with the visa in the end and my not planning this cost me and extra $20 USD (Kenyan $50 USA, Ugandan $50 USD and Rwanda $30 USD vs the $150 USD I ended up paying (Kenya $50 USD and East Africa $100 USD). Live and learn.

For lunch time we stop at Jinja (Uganda) the location of a future stop and we got to see the start of the Nile the eventually goes all the way to Egypt which I last visited in 2009. Again I was captured by how beautiful and green the surrounding area is.

The heat was very strong today, made worse when our truck caught caught in traffic and we barely moved. At one point in Kampala a local passed out truck three times so walking was faster for around 45 minutes. Tonight we stayed in the Red Chilli Hideway which is both a campsite and a hotel. Unfortunately they shut the poolside at 7 pm and as we got there so late we couldn’t use the pool 😦