Uganda - Kabale to Fort Portal

lots of these in Uganda
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We knew it had been too good to last. After white-knuckle but none the less easy journeys since leaving Ethiopia, we were due an almost immorally early start again and an am armpit-in-the-face bus ride.

Our 'Horizon' bus had been due to leave at 4.30am for our four hour fun-filled trip from Kabale to Fort Portal but on confirming our tickets with the bus company we were told that it would now set off at 3.30. We were to wait in our rooms at the hotel and someone would come for us at 3am and take us to where the bus departed from. Apparently it was too dangerous to walk the 200m to the bus station in the dark.

Armpits on the horizon

Not convinced that someone would in fact come to collect us from our rooms we huddled in the hotel entrance at 2.55am, hoods up and looking as dodgy as anyone can and expecting to be ambushed at any time. We waited and we waited and no one came. The nightclubs emptied and we started limbering up for some kung fu moves but still no one came to collect us so we skulked back to our rooms, unsure what to do. Maybe we should get scrabble out?

Amazingly someone else seemed to be stirring at the hotel at that unGodly hour, which could only mean that they were getting the same bus as us. Sure enough they were, and they were in mobile contact with the bus, which was apparently on its way. We thought we would go with them to wait but they told us to stay where we were until the bus came as they were first going to get tickets. Where from? Why now?

Finally there was a tooting of a horn and a harangued bus staff member came in and almost dragged us onto the bus. It was all so surreal and it never fails to amaze us how complicated the most simple things can be over here.

The journey was meant to take only four fun-filled hours and we had been promised a glimpse of some game (not of the scrabble variety) as we passed through Queen Elizabeth National Park on the way. As the driver got off for his second hour-long and random break we knew that a four hour journey was becoming a distant dream. Our ETA predictions slipped by as quickly as the potholes we careered around and as six hours turned to eight hours we realised that we were not on a normal bus but some sort of regional shopping expedition.

With no shopping centres or multiplexes here, the locals seem to have decided that the only place to stock up is on the bus. Every mile or so we would stop and pick up more passengers until we really did a quantity of shoppers that only Bluewater can dream of. Each time we stopped all these passengers would throw themselves over the laps of those lucky enough to have a seat, over to the windows to be able to shout and argue with the people selling chapatis, soda and goat kebabs. The most demand seemed to be for the meat that had been hanging all day in the open butchers, slowly cooking in the heat of the sun and getting marinaded in flies. The more it stank the higher the price and if the bus didn't look crowded enough some game salesman would try to get on and sell his wares.

Finally . . . FINALLY . . . we arrived in Fort Portal after 12 hours of frustration and heat, and of having a variety of armpits thrust into our faces and strangers almost sitting on our laps (even more frustrating as if I dared to sit on Chris's lap out here we would surely be arrested for 'showing romance in daytime"). Our only consolation on disembarking was at that very moment thousands of commuters back home would be about to endure a similar nightmare on the Northern Line!