Sorry it’s been a while. I fell off the back of a boda a little while back and buggered up, but didn’t break, my left wrist. Now that I can use it without too much pain again, I’ll start catching up on my food reviews. There are quite a few in the backlog. The first one back is a bit different as there isn’t a single restaurant or café involved.
What seems like ages ago now, I saw a post on Facebook of
someone going to Masai Mara for a three day safari and if anyone was interested
in joining her. The safari would be at the time of the great migration of wildebeest,
zebra and other animals north from the Serengeti in Tanzania. There’s supposed
to be well over a couple of million animals that make this annual northbound
trip.
Eventually there was a group of four that would be making
the trip to Nairobi from Kampala to meet up with Timmy Bloom our guide and
organiser. After a reasonable bit of back and forth we’d all eventually all sorted
out our travel plans for the just over 400 mile trip. Since this was a good
value budget safari, a flight wasn’t option so for the second weekend running I
would be bussing it. Just to give a bit of context, it was slightly more
expensive than the cheapest trip to Murchison Falls NP, but still cheaper than
most. It was also cheaper than any option to go to Queen Elizabeth NP. Uganda’s
nowhere near as cheap as I was hoping.
So my plans for travel would be to get a daytime bus from
Kampala on the Thursday before the start of the safari on Friday, and an
overnight bus back on the Sunday evening so I would be back in Kampala first
thing Monday morning. On the way there I was joined by Jill, who was the
instigator of the whole trip, and on the way back with Kristin. Ali to fourth
of our Ugandan troupe flew in a couple of days earlier to visit friends.
Learning from last weekend’s bus journey and after a fair
bit of research we’d be travelling with Easy Coach going to Nairobi and would
be coming back with Queens Coach. First off these coaches only sat 4 across
instead of 5; secondly I booked early enough to have my pick of the seats and
on both occasions opted for the front row behind the ‘conductor’. Best seats on
the bus for comfort, worst for head-on collisions.
The day time coach to Nairobi was scheduled to set off at
7am arriving in Nairobi at around 8pm, which if we kept to would mean a
whopping 32 mph average speed for 13 hours. Thanks to the early start I woke
the cockerels up for a change (they didn’t like it, I could see it in their
beady, sleepy eyes), hopped on a boda and made my way to meet Jill at the Easy
Coach depot.
These seats were luxury compared to Jaguar the weekend before
and I’m already dreading going with them again all the way to Kigali and back
in October / November. Because of the type of coach and the positioning of the
seat I could stretch my legs out fully, absolute bliss. Since it was unlikely
that we’d happen on a Little Chef, I’d brought a bag of ‘goodies’ along for the
journey. For breakfast I’d gone for the nutritious and poorly named ‘Lunch Bar’,
it’s a bit like a ‘Lion Bar’ but with peanuts as well. Definitely my go to
chocolate bar here when I deserve a treat. 3 out of 5. For a snack that is.
Traffic was characteristically terrible in Kampala, but not
too bad as it was still quite early, in fact we set off at ten past seven which
is practically on time or even a bit early. We stopped at the usual ‘service
station’ at Mabira forest before we got to Jinja. Thankfully as it was a proper
coach it was impossible for the vendors to thrust their wares in my face, you
don’t get that luxury in a matatu. Not long after we drove past Jinja we turned
around to go and pick up some passengers at Jinja that we’d casually driven
past. We got two more muzungus on board taking the grand total to 4.
Due to it being a while ago, not proper notes and my driving
onset narcolepsy, my timings may be a bit off, but about 3 hours after Jinja
and 5 hours in total after leaving Kampala we arrived at Busia to cross the
border into Kenya. Busia on both sides was a typical border town, i.e. a hole.
We alighted the bus and went through the Ugandan and Kenyan sides with very
little fuss. When we were filling out our visa application forms someone asked
us if we had Yellow Fever vaccinations, but obviously took as honest looking
sorts, so didn’t bother asking for any proof. As we were first off the bus, we
were the first ones back so had quite a long wait in the sun before everyone
else turned back up again.
At some point in the journey, might have been before the
border, possibly after, I cracked open one of my snacks. It was a large back of
Tropical Heat branded fried peas. I don’t think I would be exaggerating to
describe them as the culinary highlight of the trip. They are very similar to
wasabi peas, but minus the wasabi and plus spices, salt and chilli. They’re
pretty tasty, quite moreish and a great snack to have around. I will miss these
when I eventually leave East Africa. A solid 4 out of 5 snack.
Anyway after the border there was a lot more driving to do.
I’d been told by a Kenyan ages ago that the roads in Kenya were much better
than Uganda. Clearly he’s never been on the same roads as us in Kenya. To be
fair there were some good stretches. There were also some very long very bad
parts where they were building a new road so we had to make do with driving on
the dirt tracks to the side. One the plus I was right at the front, had a seat
belt and a full arm rest, so wasn’t regularly catapulted six inches in the air
and even if I was I was unlikely to puncture my spleen on landing.
The first big town that we came to was Kisumu by Lake
Victoria. Easy had a depot there inside a shopping mall and we had a brief break.
I made the most of it by raiding an ATM, using the nice clean toilets and
heading in to the Tuskys Supermarket. It was massive by Uganda standards, at
least as big as if not bigger than the largest stores in Kampala. I took advantage
of one of several food counters to get a massive beef, cheese and salad
baguette to be washed down with a large bottle of Coke. It took me a while, but
was delicious as I hadn’t eaten anything that proper all day. A solid 3 out of
5 sandwich.
The route was due to take us through another large town in
Kenya before we got to Nairobi, Nakuru. In between Kisumu and Nakuru we were
treated to some beautiful scenery as we went through Kericho home to lots of
tea plantations (Unilever was by far the biggest). Unfortunately the roads got
worse again and it was getting dark again, the scenery over the rolling hills
of tea was delightful though.
After brief stop in Nakuru, we eventually arrived in Nairobi
at around 9.30pm. First impressions were favourable as there weren’t masses of
traffic, the roads had several land, road markings, and there were even kerbs
and pavements. All things unheard of in Kampala. About half an hour later we
made it to the bus depot, but sadly the journey wasn’t over as a private
motorist had been using the car park section was refusing to pay and blocked
the entrance / exit. Eventually he caved in as the ever increasing group of
disgruntled people probably started to look a bit threatening.
We met up with Timmy who kindly stuck around to meet us and
take us to our hotel for the night. I was massively grateful of that as I didn’t
have a clue where I was or how to get to where we needed to go so would have
been easy pickings for the numerous unsavoury types who give Nairobbery it’s
unfortunate name. Finally Timmy sorted out or room key and again very kindly
insisted on climbing the stairs to ensure we got settled in our room. There
were signs of recent activity from Ali, but no sign of him. We’d get to meet
Ali next morning after I’d had a pretty pleasant night’s sleep. Earplugs in of
course. Day 2 will be in the next overly long instalment.
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