Uganda – a summary

Some infos from Uganda for our fellow travellers:

Border:
we came from Rwanda, over the small border at Cyanika, where they asked explicitly about our drone. We didn’t want to lie into their faces and confessed that we have one. In the end, we had to leave it at the border. There was some discussion if they could send it to the border with Kenya, where we wanted to leave the country, but they had no idea how to manage that, therefor we told them we would come back. After 6 weeks the drone was still there and we could leave Uganda again with our drone.

Visa:
we paid $100.- for an East Africa Visa, valid in Rwanda, Uganda and Kenia for 90 days, which we had received when entering Rwanda.

Toll, Insurance, TIP:
no toll, nobody asked about insurance, they were happy with our Carnet, nothing else required.

Money:
At the border, we changed our Rwanda Francs into Ugandan Shilling and used ATMs for the rest of our stay, sometimes even without fees. We could pay with US$ or with credit card in all the supermarkets (yes there are some in Uganda), campings and national parks.

Fuel:
We used mainly Shell filling stations, where we could pay with credit card.

Roads:
The roads are very good in general. The worst roads we had were in Kampala. As further away from the capital, the better the roads we found.

Police:
There are some road blocks, but normally they waved us through. Around Kampala we were stopped twice in a row, once we had used a climbing road to overtake and bribed the police lady to drive on. The second time we were just stopped because our car looked interesting. The young police man first asked us for 1,000,- USD, but we could talk him into exchanging WhatsApp numbers instead and invited him to visit us in Austria. This is Africa.

Internet:
We had bought a SIM card in Kabale at the MTN Service Centre and it worked very well in all parts of the country. After 4 weeks it got temporary blocked and we had to go to another service centre with the passport to get it unblocked again.

Camping:
There are some nice places around the important spots in the country with good infrastructure, which made exploring Uganda easy – more in the posts from Uganda. We paid usually $20,-per night. We didn’t wild camp in Uganda.

National Parks:
We visited the Gorillas in Bwindi NP (700,- USD), the Queen Elizabeth NP and Murchison Falls NP. We found that Uganda has a different attitude to national parks, with Chinese tar roads crossing through them and settlements inside the park. Nevertheless we had some great experiences in Uganda.

You can drive through Bwindi NP and Queen Elizabeth NP without paying, but we didn’t see very much on these roads.

Food:
a typical street food in Uganda is “Rolex”, a chapati with fried eggs and maybe some veggies rolled up.
In the North, we discovered Odi, a creamy mixture of peanut and sesame. We had it once with the local spinach and after buying it along the road, we made a cauliflower dish with it. But it also tastes lekker, when you dip a banana into it.

That’s it about Uganda, we will tell you more about Kenya next.

2 thoughts on “Uganda – a summary”

  1. Torsten, DG7RO

    Danke für die gute Zusammenfassung deiner Erfahrung in Uganda. Jetzt verstehe ich auch deine Fahrtroute nach Kenya 🙂

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