NO LIMITS
Already we had tarried awhile in Kampala, Uganda’s friendly and gloriously chaotic capital city, where the ubiquitous Maribou storks - a metre and a half tall in their stockinged feet – dominate the skyline from the overhang of almost every downtown building. These storks casting their beady gaze like some sort of animated surveillance camera across the city’s cacophonous comings and goings, while at the same time relieving themselves so prolifically you’d think the pavements were white- washed every half hour or so. People walk fast in Kampala.
White water rafting
After our gorilla adventures, we white- water rafted down the source of the Nile at Jinja, negotiating a maelstrom of rapids and whirlpools called ‘Seek and Destroy’, ‘Bad Place’, and the ever-so-aptly named ‘Total Mayhem’, an all-consuming eddy that sucks you in like getting your big toe stuck in the plug-hole of your bath, only a thousand times more intense. A healthy indifference to your own mortality is best in these situations.
I can’t get enough of short break adventures – this one was barely 10 days long – and in my experience, having recently done an action-packed 10-day hop to India’s Ranthambore National Park in search (successfully I might add) of the even more endangered Bengal tiger, you can do as many as 3 or 4 of these short adventure breaks for the price of just one month-long trip to some or other far flung place.
And so it was, in Uganda, and in less time than it takes British ladies to be knocked out of Wimbledon, we tracked silverback gorillas, rafted on the Nile, dodged roundabouts of Maribou pooh in Kampala, and hitched rides on taxi- service push-bikes past women with pineapples on their heads and makeshift Houses of God called Church of World Vision or some such.
Too many of this planet’s great wonders are fading fast – glaciers, tigers, the ice field atop Kilimanjaro – and now, and it bears repeating, barely 600 mountain gorillas remain in the world, about half of them among the volcanic mountains that straddle Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. See them while you can.
Jungle river crossing in Bwindi
GETTING THERE BWINDI IMPENETRABLE FOREST
Explore! (0844 499 0901;
www.explore.co.uk) does a 10-day Gorilla & Chimp Safari from £1,735 (land only) or £2,350 (flights included). Price includes accommodation in hotel, lodge and tented encampment, and most meals.
Country hoedown: Uganda style
28
www.activinstinct.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46