Altogether, we spent three months in Kenya already, two traveling up and down the coast while we were waiting for our Defender to arrive in Mombasa back in December and January, and now we spent another full month exploring the western and northern part of this huge country and there would have still been plenty to discover, but for us, it was time to continue our trip and explore a new country - Uganda. Neither of us has been to this place before but everything we’ve heard so far sounded great. We decided not to take the more common route but to cross at the Suam-border further up north. We read that the road condition after the border on the Ugandan side was very bad, and since it was the rainy season we were a bit worried, therefore, we contacted someone who is running a lodge along this route and we asked him about the road condition. He told us that it was passable today as long as we would make it before the rain, which was supposed to start around 2 pm. We, therefore, left early in the morning and hit the road. The border crossing was easy, there were not many people crossing the border and everyone was very friendly. It took a bit of time as usual, but after around one hour we were already through and only had to wait for customs to release our car. This, unfortunately, took a while and the guy working at the office told us that we had to pay road tax for 3 months, even though our East Africa visa would expire in two months already and we were only planning to spend one month in Uganda. It seemed very weird and we started discussing the issue with him. He was very friendly and understood our argument, but he couldn’t do anything about it (it’s the system…) so after half an hour we decided to just keep moving and paying the road tax (which then was 60 dollars instead of 20) to keep ongoing. We stopped in the first town to get two sim cards so we could use the internet again. This turned out to be the next challenge. We managed to get two sim cards but they didn’t work, somehow they got blocked (by the system) and in the end, we had no internet but lost another couple of hours.
We started the drive on the difficult road we heard so much about and soon knew why. The scenery was breathtaking, it was green everywhere around us because it was the rainy season, which also meant that the road was veeeery muddy. It was basically just one big construction site for about 40 kilometers going up and down along the Mount Elgon and it felt more like sledding than driving, Tom was doing an incredible job maneuvering our huge Defender through the muddy road but we were both sweating blood whenever the car was slowly turning sideways into the road when it lost the grip on the ground. We were both praying it wouldn’t flip over. Now and then there was a local on a motorbike and we even saw two Matatus (local busses) trying to get up the road but they didn’t get very far, even when 10 people were pushing in the back - this road was not possible in the rainy season without a 4x4. In the middle of this trip, it also started raining, since it was already around 3 in the afternoon because of all the time we lost at the border and the mobile phone shop. But eventually, we made it to the tarmac road and we both were more than happy to have an “actual” road again to drive on.
When we reached the Home of Friends Guesthouse, a beautiful place run by a Dutch guy, our car looked like we had driven through more than one puddle (which was true) and it was still raining when we arrived, so we decided to get a room instead of camping. It was a long and tiring day and we were both happy we could just sit in a restaurant and eat something and didn’t have to bother with setting up our camp in the rain and cooking dinner. The next day we tasted our first Rolex for breakfast. It’s a local dish, kind of a wrap with a chapati and some eggs and vegetables inside -DELICIOUS!! They sell it in every corner of the country for less than a dollar. To get a first impression of Uganda, we decided to go on a hike with a guide who would take us through the local villages. We both fell in love from the beginning, the people were very friendly, and compared to Kenya and Tanzania, we didn’t feel so exposed. The locals were friendly and of course curious but rather shy than intrusive. It was a long hike, around 20 kilometers and we were lucky to not get into the rain. Our guide Mozes explained that during the rainy season, it was mostly raining at night but not in the morning.
While we were exploring Kapchorwa, the guard at the lodge offered to clean our car inside and outside. When we returned from our 7 hours hike, he was still cleaning! We were very happy to have our car back nice and clean and the guard was happy to make some extra money. We decided to stay another night at the guesthouse and arranged with Mozes to go visit a coffee plantation the next morning before we would drive on to Jinja.
Our next stop was at the Haven, a lodge which was recommended to us by fellow Overlanders, supposedly it was the nicest camping site in Uganda. We arrived and it was indeed a little paradise with the greatest view from every spot on to the Nile river. The owner was a German guy who introduced himself as Rainer and he gave us a big discount right away when we were telling him that we were overlanding through Africa in a Defender from Switzerland. He did the same a few years back and never returned to Germany - we understood why. Our intention was to camp here for 4 nights before we would head to Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, where we planned to meet the Dutch couple we met in Lamu back in December and who invited us to their place and to bring our Defender to a mechanic shop to have it checked, since we had been driving for 10,000 kilometers and after Lake Turkana we definitely needed a check. Our plans, changed, once more :-D
Rainer as well as our Dutch friends advised us to not bring our car to a mechanic shop and leave it there. It happens all the time that mechanics would, instead of fixing a car, take stuff out from it to re-sell it elsewhere. Rainer offered to contact his mechanic he always calls if he has issues with one of his cars and asks him to come to the lodge so he could check the Defender right there at the workshop of the lodge. The mechanic was available and came the next day. We knew that we had to change the engine oil and replace some filters, so he went at it. After he emptied the old oil, we checked the oil he was going to put back in and since it wasn’t the same kind we used back home we quickly called Anna, our mechanic in Switzerland. Lucky we did, because she told us that the oil he wanted to use was not at all what we needed for our Defender. Rainer sent one of his staff to get the right engine oil but this turned out to be another challenge. Nowhere in Jinja were they selling the engine oil we needed? Our car was now in the workshop and we couldn’t move it anywhere, so Rainer offered us a room at his lodge and we figured we would make new plans the next day. In the meantime, our Dutch friends informed us that they needed to go away on a work trip, and afterward, they already planned to go visit the Netherlands, so it was not possible to meet, unfortunately. So we decided to quickly change our program. Instead of staying longer at the lodge, we decided to head to Kampala the next day already to try to find the right engine oil. We could park the Defender at the Haven, Rainer’s driver drove us to the Matatu (local bus) station in Jinja from where we took the local bus to Kampala (always an adventure).
In Africa, when you take a taxi, a bodaboda (motorbike taxi), or even a bus, it will 9 out 10 times drive to the petrol station first (planning ahead is not in their culture :-D) so we were sitting in the Matatu and drove to a petrol station still in Jinja when I was looking outside the window and saw the engine oil we needed for our Defender right in front of my nose. We called Rainer and told him about it and he sent his driver to buy the oil, so this problem was sorted before we even arrived in Kampala.
We treated ourselves to a nice hotel and enjoyed the big city life for a couple of days. We spent our days exploring the city, visiting museums, shopping malls, and going to all the fancy nice restaurants we were craving. On the first night we decided on a Japanese restaurant where they served delicious Sushi as well as Ramen, another night we went to Le Chateau Brasserie Belge, an amazing restaurant where we enjoyed a Tartar, a nice steak and some salmon and we also got some cheese and Iberico ham at their shop next door to bring back with us. We also could solve our sim card problem and at the craft market, we got into such a shopping thrill that in the end, we had to find a post office where we could send some stuff back home because we couldn’t fit everything we bought in the car for the rest of the trip:-D It will be a nice welcome present when we come back home.
However, after five days of enjoying the big city life in Kampala, we were more than ready to leave the busy city again and go back into nature. When we arrived back at the lodge, Rainer had already prepared everything for us, we only had to fill up the new engine oil. When we wanted to start the engine, unfortunately, it didn’t work. We got a bit nervous that we broke our car, but after another phone call with Anna where she instructed us what to do, in the end, we managed to turn on the engine and our Defender was happy and running again. We spent another couple of days at the Haven and went on a short boat cruise on the Nile the next day. It was hard to say goodbye and leave since we liked the place a lot. We enjoyed our dinners together with Rainer, where he was telling us his story about how he came to Africa and why he loved it so much and once more we were wondering if this might happen to us as well, getting stuck somewhere along the route because you like a place that much. But for now, there is still sooo much we want to see and explore, so we keep on moving :)
