Itinerary #4 – Uganda camping details and distances

We drove from the Cyanika border post in the south of Uganda, turning around at Murchison Falls as the most northern point on the route, and then exited Uganda again on the Eastern side into Kenya at the Malaba border.

By the time we got to Uganda, the “short” rainy season was in full swing…leading to us getting stuck a couple of time in mud caused by “landslides” from the excavated hill slopes, to having to negotiate some fairly treacherous dirt roads, to skipping the southern part of Queen Elizabeth National Park completely as trucks were stuck in the dirt road as well as skipping the most northern part of the country due to roads being washed away. Apart from that, there are a couple of new Chinese tar roads that are not necessarily on T4A that makes the journey a bit easier…

Top recommendations:

· Go and see the gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest – even though you only get to spend an hour with a gorilla family in the middle of the rain forest, it is absolutely worth it! There are only 3 places globally to see the mountain gorillas in their natural habitat: Uganda (cost $650 pp), Rwanda (cost $1500 pp) or Congo (cost $400pp plus military escort fees etc)

· Murchison Falls is a hidden gem – both the falls, river Nile as well as the National Park. In our opinion, much better than Queen Elizabeth National Park

· Go fishing on the river Nile…but go early in the morning :)

Top tip / advisable changes to our itinerary:

· In hindsight we were very disappointed with the Queen Elizabeth National Park. So stay outside the park as we did, and drive through it on the national roads, but not worth it to pay to go inside.

· It is easier to first go to the southern part of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest from Rwanda’s side, go to see the gorillas, and then turn east to Lake Bunyonyi…the forest is truly impenetrable :)

Our 16 day and 1,616km itinerary: