Howdy folks. Today a short recall for you of a day trip I took from Kampala in Uganda to a nearby town called Jinja. Hope today’s blog finds you well.

Yes, I have been recalling last year’s incredible ‘round the world’ experience and have most recently been blogging about my time in Uganda. I actually had over a week there, but whilst in Kampala I did have a couple of days of relaxing and meeting a friend’s family and the like and a couple of other things not worth blogging about.

But I did also take the opportunity to head to Jinja one day, a town around 80km by the most direct road from Kampala. The road, however, is hella busy. The estimated time I was given was around 2hours on the right minibus. I was advised to go into Kampala, as I was staying at the Red Chilli Hideaway and that was far from the centre of town, so I could get a seat on the direct bus. However, the boda boda organised by the hostel and given these instructions decided to take me to the side of the road in the Jinja direction and put me on a mini bus there.

Did this cost me time? I can’t say. There are two roads to Jinja, the A109 or Jinja Highway, or the Jinja Expressway which is around 18km longer. My bus took the A109 and it was like a car park for much of the journey! The bus also stopped a bit in the first part of the journey. A two hour journey became a four hour journey! I kid ye not. There was roadwork going on along the highway and we were stopped in a couple of positions for around 20 minutes. It was a nightmare really and definitely not what you want when you are doing a day trip.

Uganda and Kampala especially is known for dreadful traffic. These roads in and out of the capital are one lane when they should be three ideally, there is plenty of traffic including plenty of trucks so economically it would make sense for a good portion of the road to be much wider. After heading to Kenya after Uganda you can see that it is entirely possible. Uganda is about to start making big money from oil, so perhaps they will see some serious money spent on infrastructure. It is sorely needed.

Not that the scenery isn’t nice and all, and once we cleared the main points of congestion we moved quickly, but that damage was done, we must have totalled over 2 hours of sitting in traffic and not moving. Still, I had plenty of hours in the day, I would just now be arriving back to Red Chilli after dark.

There is an impressive bridge as you enter Jinja and suddenly I was there! I was able to jump off the bus which let everyone outside a Jinja service station (petrol station) and get on a boda boda to the Source of the Nile entrance, which was only about ten minutes or less. Now, be prepared – it is a tourist experience. Okay, not many foreign tourists, but loads of local tourists visit.

We rode along a shady road to get there with lots of sellers either side of the road selling fruit, then a left turn and short road to the entrance gate. The price to enter the area at the Source of the Nile was 30,000 Ugandan Shillings, or around $12AUD or $8USD. So that’s not outrageous, however if you want to take a boat out to the ‘source’, it’s 220,000 Shillings. What you need to keep in mind, and I was pretty angry at that price, is that it’s for the entire boat (which wasn’t initially communicated to me). They can take twenty people at a guess, they are big (for the task) boats. And this is for the middle trip – there’s a longer hour trip which is more, or a shorter 10 – 15 minutes too but that doesn’t get to the ‘source’. So I was on the 30 minute trip in a large boat with my guide who was a lovely guide and actually got the price down to 150,000 Shillings.

The walk to the Nile River – and I should point out that this is the White Nile, the Nile River flows down to Egypt, but is made up of two rivers initially, the White and Blue Niles. The confluence is near the capital of Sudan, Khartoum. From there on the Nile is one river down to the delta on the far side of Cairo. The Blue Nile starts in Ethiopia, the White Nile starts at Lake Victoria. Oh yes, I didn’t mention that this point is where Lake Victoria becomes the White Nile and flows northwards.

It’s a beautiful spot, and there’s a little island out there that is supposed to be the exact spot where the lake – which you can see a tiny corner of – officially becomes the White Nile. Now, to be fair, less than 5% of the Nile’s water comes from this spot, but it’s as good a place as any to be considered the ‘Source’ of the Nile, and it sounds pretty catchy.

To get to the boat it’s a short walk from the gate, there weren’t many there at the time, but there are pictures to take, birds to see, you can dip your hand in the waters from the boat and get off at this little island, which used to be a lot bigger but the water levels have risen dramatically over the last 10 years or so.

Honestly, the best bit was my super friendly guide who I chatted with a lot, as this really is just a tourist trap. But then again – why not? For a more in depth review check out the video as this one is hard to write up. I was directed to a mini-bus back that thankfully took the other road back to Kampala and was just over two hours this time, as it was supposed to be.

Thanks as always for popping by! Next blog will focus on moving on from Uganda to Kenya by overnight bus. Take care wherever you are in the world right now, and May the Journey Never End!