Kampala to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest
We left today at 6am to begin the long drive to view the mountain gorilla in Rwanda. We should arrive tonight at around 6pm. We pitch our tents and the cook team cook while we laze around. Tomorrow we go to see the gorillas.
We spent the night at Hot Chilli Hotel in Kampala and arrived there at around 8pm. We all upgraded to either a dorm or single room. I chose a room over a dorm as I need time to recharge my social battery.
By the time I arrived, I was so hungry I could have eaten a nun’s arse through a mahogany convent door. Although I’m largely vegetarian or, more correctly, flexitarian, I had a big barbecue platter of pork and chicken. It was delicious 😋. I slept like a log that night and had dreams of trucks falling off cliffs.
I enjoy these long journeys. These’s a certain rhythm about them. You know you can’t go anywhere so you just surrender to the rocking motion of the truck, the sound of the wind whistling by, the changing landscapes and differing weather, temperature and elevations. I usually lose focus of the destination and just enjoy the journey.
We passed many African villages on the way and they all looked similar although I’m sure they weren’t. Most seemed to be stretched along the side of the road with many shops and people selling things. They were all full of activity and vibrant, if a bit shabby.
Half of us played cards during the trip here while the rest of us read or snoozed. I was in the latter camp.
The highlight drama was when one of the young women put on her coat as it was getting chilly. She found a spider on it spinning a web on her coat to hold its eggsack. We decided not to kill it but to liberate the spider and eggs at next stop. This we did. The spider wasn’t that big, about the size of a fingernail, but looked very spidery; about 5/10 on the shudder scale. I got real close to her and would have let her climb onto my hand if I knew she wasn’t poisonous; I wasn’t sure.
Journey coming to an end now and we will soon be at our camp.
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