March 31, 2025 to April 2, 2025
Day 180-182: Bukwo – Mbale City
The amazing road continued around the north of Mt Elgon. The road is only a few years old, and evidently of Chinese construction (it looks like a well-made Chinese road, and some of the locals thought we were Chinese). Plenty of ups and downs around the mountain, but lovely smooth tarmac. It’s early in the rainy season here. It’s rained several times at night (occasionally all night) but the rain hasn’t impacted our travels during the day, yet. The rain that has come has made the grass grow like crazy and it’s all green grass, green trees (banana palms and straight, tall blue gums) and rich red earth. The road is also around 1000m above the plain to the north leading to sweeping views. Picturesque.
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We wanted to feel different in Uganda, but we still feel like walking bags of cash. Interesting that we’ve read of other travellers who have entered Uganda and felt completely different. It’s a bit annoying, but also it seems to be a few that have a lot of contact with tourists, or are desperate, that give the place a bad feel. Again, this is only a minority, but we’ve had a rock thrown at us by a woman wanting money, several kids getting excited and yelling at us to f#$% off as well as the more harmless demands to ‘give me my money’. We’ve also been physically accosted by a guy while we were trying to have lunch – once the restaurant owner saw him off, the crowd of adolescents returned to requesting money from us. Shame, and casts a shadow over otherwise lovely people. Plenty just greet us (in a myriad of languages, most we can’t understand) and wave.
I hope this gets better as we go west. It turns out we both get frustrated at this behaviour, so it’s a good thing we aren’t going to ride through Ethiopia (well known by cycle tourists for rock-throwing, money-demanding, kids).
The road we took goes past Sipi Falls. A set of three high falls cascading down Mt Elgon. It’s a bit of a tourist destination. We thought we’d stop and see what the fuss is about, although we know what a waterfall looks like. The local villages have a cooperative / mafia established to prevent you just walking along the local roads to the falls, and we’d read about horror stories of tourists without a guide being extorted, so we succumbed and took a guide. The upper falls is reasonably high (~85m), but somewhat plain (and surrounded by a spider’s web of poly pipes taking water for irrigation). The second falls has a nice cascade followed by a shower of water. We were right under the falls at about midday and, looking up at the falls, the angle of the sun and water made it look pretty special. We asked our guide about the third falls, but he claimed there was nothing of importance further down river. Maybe we’d misunderstood. So, we paid up, and rode on. A few kilometres further along, we looked back, and up, and could clearly see a third falls (apparently 100m high) where there was supposed to be nothing. We’ve been lied to and cheated several times (hey, that’s normal when you’re travelling and at a disadvantage in any negotiation), but this was quite disappointing. Luckily, we saw most of the 3rd falls (at a distance), so we could at least enjoy them. We might keep the guides phone number, but he won’t be getting any positive recommendations from us.
Not far past Sipi Falls, the road plummets to the level of the surrounding plain. From the plain we could see another significant waterfall – there must be plenty on this escarpment. And going down it got proportionally hotter. We rolled our way into Mbale City, and as we approached the city, were joined by hordes of motorcycles. There are lots of motorcycles in Uganda (and most cities we’ve been to – it’s not uncommon to see 4 full grown men on a cheap Chinese 125cc), but the bikes were particularly thick here. And ridden particularly manically. We had to focus to avoid joining in with the bumper-bikes.
We’re having a day off in Mbale City. It’s a very busy commercial centre. The central market is impressive – it took us about half an hour of wandering past clothes, shoes, electronics, dried fish, beans, rice, pots, pans, everything you might think you might need, over several levels, just to find what we wanted (bananas and mango!).
Today's ride: 134 km (83 miles)
Total: 9,069 km (5,632 miles)
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