Following our night in a tent at Lake Nakuru, Eldoret was luxury, staying a room within a bigger house (no Eliud Kipchoge in sight though).
The overland tour with Intrepid includes camping but you can upgrade to beds or rooms along the way if availability permits. This single room cost me USD20 – toilet flushed and there was toilet paper, but not much luck with a warm water shower (not that the cold showers matter much as it gets so hot!!), so 2/3 as far as bathroom luxuries go. Extra bonus, no baboons. We had our outdoor dinner cooked by our chef who made the most yum soups and everyone pitched in with some food prep and cleaning up.
Next morning we left early, as usual, for a HUGE driving day into Kampala, Uganda. After about 4 hours of driving and losing our way and thinking we were taking a bush toilet stop in peace until kids walking to school came out of nowhere, we arrived at the Ugandan border in a line with literally a million trucks (dont quote me). We ended up walking to the border station from the bus to get the process started. I think we were there for about 2.5 hours, some of which was blamed it is slower today because our printers are not working (which apparently happens all the time). We were the only foreigners there with our visas already issued but we were watching everyone in the visa line come and go. Even the one guy in our group who got his visa on arrival finished waaayy before everyone else….
When we finally escaped into freedom of Uganda it was another long drive to Kampala, about 5 hours. Once in Uganda the roads became worse, more rough and regular speed bumps which further slowed our big 4WD bus down and gave a pretty good dose of motion sickness. The scenery became more hilly and we could clearly see the Ugandan people living their lives on the side of the road. We would see people in outdoor shops and markets going about their daily business, kids taking their baths in their front yard, people just wandering around or with bicycles carrying LOTS of bananas, groups of young men with motorcycles, electricity workers free climbing poles and men hanging off the back of driving trucks and sitting on top of trucks. You will see men standing in lines in town with muchomo (meat skewers) and soft drink and water bottles ready to sell to drivers (like a drive through) and you will see lots of women walking around transporting goods on their head, like wood, or fruit.
We finally reached Kampala about 7pm exhausted and ready to get out of the bus when 11km from the hotel we got stuck in traffic with nowhere else to go but that same road. I think we all did a good job of not completely losing our minds, When we were 3km from the hotel we could see views of the crazy amount of bikes, cars and people walking on the roads and even women breastfeeding on the side of road and the CRAZY AMOUNT OF PLASTIC BOTTLE RUBBISH PILES. Seeing this in a way made me felt so humbled and a bit guilty about feeling I was glad the day was over and that we were finally at our really nice hotel (room included) for the night with buffet dinner and a cocktail bar. Dinner over and to bed, 2/3 on bathroom facilities and added bonus of a fan!
Next morning we were off on the drive to Queen Elizabeth National Park. What we had begun to realise is that the service station toilet situation in Uganda is disgusting, You will be lucky to have western toilet, even luckier to have a working flush or hose and guaranteed there will not be toilet paper or running water basin. You must have your own sanitary wipes and hand sanitiser. Personally I much preferred a bush toilet. I happily pitched tent when we arrived at our campground which looked nice (and was gated) before we headed out on a 4 hour afternoon game drive. We didn’t see much to begin with, a few elephants but the sunset starting was a beautiful pastel pink and orange that you rarely see. We stumbled upon a group of cars watching a male and female lion mating and in the distance we could see another male lion slowly walking in from about 300 metres away, possibly to make an ambush? Anyhoo lions are interesting! Apparently they mate every 30 minutes for about 5 days, so we hung around for a couple of sessions and, well, it was funny, because the actual mating part lasted not very long at all, and old mate ambusher was so slow and taking catnaps by the time he ambushed it would be Christmas. It didn’t seem to bother any of the lions one it there were cars and people around, I suppose they are used to it. All of this was so amazing to see as well as some playfighting and baby elephants on the way back to camp. Pretty stoked with that game drive.
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