A quiet night in...........

Well, I had a planned a quiet night in with Ernest Hemingway (apparently, the bridge does it) when 25 drunk young Kampalans kidnapped me and took me to a bar.... again.
Stockholm Syndrome being what it is, I soon adopted their philosophy - Tigunye!

After a lot of beers and a rambling discussion on gynaecology (they are a forthright people), I was told that I couldn't leave Uganda without having a Rolex. This is a chapatti / omelette ensemble and the perfect end of evening street food for drunks.

I probably won't drink on the flight home today.

Thank you Uganda, you've been great company.

Oh go on then.....

Happy now?

That's all folks!

Well, yes. That is rather it. The bike has gone back, I've had a valedictory booze up in Kampala and now I'm really just waiting for BA to send the big metal bird to collect me and deposit me back in rainy old England.

I would like to thank the hundreds of who contributed to this blog but since it was only me and a bottle of milk stout , I won't.

I will say in conclusion that you should do something like this and soon. If a half-witted dipsomaniac like me can wobble around Africa for a few days, then there are few reasons, beyond inertia, for your not doing something similar.

And here's a quick picture to illustrate what a rotten time I've had...

Chris

Soapy Trip Wa**

Soapy Trip Wash.

Yes it's time to get the bike all soapy and wash off the dirt from the trip. Obviously, I didn't do it myself - I used one of Kampala's many Boda Wash facilities.

People who know me will tell you that, normally, there's nothing I like more than sitting down for a couple of hours and giving my bikes a really thorough clean. Nothing says "futility of existence" quite like cleaning all the gunky bits behind the engine with your toothbrush.

Actually, I shouldn't knock cleaning and those who practice it because there's a very nice man in St Opsley who is polishing the exhaust pipes on my Nelli at this very moment. And I imagine that the scene there, looks exactly like this:

Kitten pictures

Look, you're really going to have to stop believing me about these kittens pictures. It's not going to happen.

Anyway, I've just got back into Kampala where the lovely ladies at my guest house took one look at me and made me tea and toast. Bloody marvellous. I don't know about Speke when he got back from Lake Victoria but if he had anything other than jam on toast, he was just wrong.

..... Lummee, I must look worse than I thought coz they've also done me a huge plate of fruit. Extremely kind of them and guaranteed to ward off scurvy

Ferry, Cross Da Mwanza

As sung by that rather middle-classed Merseyside band, Gerry and the Breadmakers.

This is the bike, quietly tucked away on a ferry across the Mwanza gulf. It's the Busisi - Kikongo ferry, the alternative being a 200km detour. You'll notice that I'm taking the photo from the "back" of the boat (Stop me if I use too many nautical terms). This is so that, when the captain realises he's forgotten to put the plug in or something equally vital, I can swim with a school of happy hippos back to shore.

Safety regulations weren't quite as front and centre as they are in Europe.

All very amusing until, on the way out of Mwanza, I passed the rather sweet memorial to 100 or so who died when a previous Ferry sunk. 

Sorry for the lack of kittens. Next time, deffo.

Wot no Kenya?

So keen geographers (those who, for example, know that it is some considerable distance between Kampala and Freetown, Sierra Leone) will notice the lack of posts from Kenya. Well now, there's a thing....

My old granny said "If you can't say anything nice about someone then don't say anything at all" but then she was a flatulent old baggage with wonky teeth and a penchant for Gin.

Anyway, after the waterfront idyll which was Musoma, Kenya was almost guaranteed to disappoint and I'm afraid it did.

I'd heard many bad reports but was anxious to see for myself and not to add to the canon but, like Thucydides describing the Peloponnesian War, I can only describe what I saw:

A lot of "You give me money" type begging which was in marked contrast to the other three countries.

Bad roads and by some considerable margin, the most dangerous driving I've seen.

The main Nairobi Road ending in a heap of putrid rubbish

Sadly, I can't recall a single actively positive experience beyond, perhaps, the hotel staff being quite pleasant and even then it lacked a warmth I'd received elsewhere. In contrast, I could list dozens from Rwanda, TZ and Uganda. 

But I was only there for 36 hours and may have just lucked out. I genuinely hope you'll go there, have a wonderful time and meet all the nice people I so improbably missed. I certainly agonised about posting as negative a portrayal as this but then, you know, Thucydides and all that.

Sorry for being serious - I promise the next post will have cute kittens and fart gags in it

Wot no lions?

We have a letter from a Mrs Ratbag of Gravesend who writes
"Totes loving the blog but could we have more pictures of wildlife"?"

So, Mrs Ratbag, my philosophical musings are insufficient somehow? You'd rather a picture of a wildebeest than words of wisdom hewn from my very soul? Well, fair enough, I suppose.

If you look carefully, there are a couple of cows in the second picture

Everyone's a bloody critic!

Why I won't go on a safari

White people in kagoules, photographing black people who are doing the washing up. You've got to be bored if you take a photo because the subject is a) black or b) washing up

Fancy being stuck on a bus with that lot for 10 days? My idea of hell

Rant over, I'm off to photograph a chap cleaning the toilets

Selfie

Not really a selfie - This is the vertically challenged security guard who turned on Sinatra FM.
He was really struggling to balance the bike on his tippy toes but he rode it up the ramp out of the underground car park without binning it. After a night on the milk stout, I was happy to let him.

Having a lovely time

Now I don't want to p1ss anyone off back home in Blighty but Musoma is rather splendid.
It's got the waves of Lake Victoria lapping on the shore, a late afternoon sun shining and a gentle breeze.

Oh, and more milk stout but this time they have pint jugs to serve it in which is scientifically proven to make it taste better.
And yes, I have been on it for a couple of hours now.

PS Just ordered some fish stew for me tea.... It's going to be bl00dy goat-fish again isn't it?

FM! It's Frank Sinatra

As I was leaving Mwanza this morning, I could hear a tinny, scratching sound but didn't think much of it. A short while later, I found myself singing a Frank Sinatra number which is a bit odd because, whilst no one can deny he's a legend, he's not a particular favourite of mine. Then I realised I could actually hear Frank singing!

I think I'd read somewhere that, when you die, it's quite common to hear Frank Sinatra and he did seem to be singing to me from down a long tunnel. Clearly, he was beckoning me over to the other side.

Well, the sun was shining and I figured that if this was death, it was a pleasant enough prospect and I would go along with it.

Being a bit OCD, I thought I'd better stop and fill up in readiness for the afterlife. On removing my helmet, I could hear the tinny noise again.....

Aside 1
Before leaving Kampala, I was nagged into buying a cheap Ugandan phone, coz my Samsung, as ever, is acting up.
However, since the SIM only works in a country which I left a week ago, it's been as much use as a carpet fitter's ladder and has languished in a top pocket of my jacket.

Aside 2
When I left my hotel this morning, the security guard was admiring my jacket and when he discovered that it had armour sewn in, took to punching it. 

Anyway, back at the limbo petrol station, I found the noise was coming from the top pocket of my jacket. The security guard had accidentally turned on my cheap Nokia's FM radio.

So I'm not dead and Frank isn't serenading me from beyond the veil - It was just the Mwanza FM Breakfast Show request spot.

Sort of a shame, really.

It's the little differences.....

Example?

Well I've eaten a lot of goat of late and in Uganda and Rwanda it has usually been in a sauce/curry/stew format.

Stung by a hotel-wide cheese shortage which prevented me having "Tanzanian Fishy Welsh Rarebit" (seriously), I once again plumped for something goat-ee

Unlike the usual chewy bits of chevre cassoulet, what turned up was basically a road accident involving Gordon the goat. He'd just been scraped up and put in a dish. I fondly imagined some degree of butchery was practiced here but what I got was a goat kit.

Ill equipped for an autopsy, with a blunt knife and a spoon, I tried in vain to reconstruct his last hours but all I came up with was:

              Bleat Honk Splat

And I'm not overly certain about the Honk part.

Still, it was a top sauce and I'm sure the left over bits will reappear in future meals

Sorry Gordon.

Vincent

PS. I would have taken a photo but it was horrifically graphic and besides, my hoots of laughter and calling out for the "crash team" had already given away the fact that I wasn't taking my meal seriously

Shopping and Football

Eating healthily as per usual (see photo) 

Well, OK I went to the local store and bought three things with vaguely silly names.
It has to be said that FC Barcelona are welcome to their official African beer. It tastes like, looks like and ultimately reverts to a liquid akin to duck piddle. It also gives no pleasure to anyone on its journey.

And talking of premiership football, have you ever wondered what happened to your "2013 Champions' League, 2nd Round, Away"  replica strip for which you ponied up £85?

Well, as we know it was made by poor people in the third world and then sold to you for a huge profit. But what to do when your heroes have been unceremoniously trounced and the missus tells you to throw it out? You can't very well use it for dusters because it generates more static than a Cat 5 hurricane and anyway, could you really mop up cat plops with it?

Well, drop it off at Oxfam and magically, it ends up in Africa...on the backs of the very poor again. See? Circle of Life / Hakuna Matata / Piso Mojado and all that.

Honestly, if I had a pound for every lad I've seen extolling me to Fly Emirates, I'd be able to afford to. From a pretty unrigourous study, I'd say the two most popular teams in the remainders bin would seem to be :

Fly Emirates / Arsenal
Etihad / MCFC

Strangely, the Glasier family team are not that common nor are any teams from Merseyside. 

And I'll bring back a hippo and keep him in the shed if I see a Hatters strip.

"Carry straight on to your destination"

All the wannabe Ewan & Charleys would obviously relish such terrain but this, the main road between Biharamulo and Geita,  deteriorated quickly. (As you might imagine, when the going was at its worst, my first instinct wasn't to get the camera out.) It carried on for nearly 70kms and was hard going....And yet, it was still oodles more fun than the M1at rush hour

Thank the baby Jesus, I'd had a hearty breakfast. Ah....

Living the dream

Well, I checked out of Fort Soixante Neuf and sped to Mwanza so I could get some money and finally eat something. Unfortunately, the first 70km were a dirt track. As I believe I may have mentioned before, I'm no natural off roader but it's funny how you improve at things when needs must.

300 kms in the sun and with the first 70 being so hard might make a lot of people wonder why anyone would want to ride a bike around Africa.
Well, there's the scenery, the diverse cultures and, of course, the wildlife but for me, it's a map, no particular place to go and a bottle of milk stout.

As Shakespeare put it, "gentlemen in England now abed must be well jel"

Bread and Water

Tanzania - Yay!

I'm staying in a German Hill Fort which dates from the last decades of the 19th century.

However, in a moment of abstraction, I confused my currencies at the border and only got £18 worth of Tanzanian Shillings. I can't find another ForEx and the smaller rural ATMs don't work with UK cards.
Fortunately, my room tonight is £4. I've just splashed out a whole £7 to fuel up the bike until Mwanza so I have ~£6 for a slap up meal at Mrs Miggins' Ugali Shop. A bit less now that I've bought water for teeth cleaning.

Breakfast today was an omelette and two dry bread rolls so I think I'll have a fasting day today and get to Mwanza ASAP tomorrow.

Oh and I did stop for a bottle of Fanta en route. This fella and two of his mates were guarding the shop entrance.

Hotel towels

I am so nicking this towel they've given me at One Love

I look forward to drying my scrotum on Pooh's chirpy, lack-witted physiognomy.

Christopher Robin.

[Of course, if they had been E H Shepard drawings and not the hateful Disney perversions....] 

Don't drink the water

Now that's quite a muddy river. 
Well, I presume it's mud - It might be the source of the chocolate lake in Charley Wonker and the Willy Factory 

(And there you were thinking I was going to lower the tone with a diarrhoea reference!)

Gosh it's pretty 2

See? It's not all poverty and dust. There are some achingly pretty bits too.

And, no, I didn't photoshop the birdy in. He was looking for his tea.

African Queen

As I scoffed my tea,  a gang of 10 chaps loaded the SS Primus with the local beer of the same name. It probably took 90 minutes and was, all the while, accompanied by the whooping and hollering you hear on films.
As always, credit to Africa for this: I'm sure it's bloody hard work but at least they make it sound like fun

Dull fact: The brewery is powered by methane extracted from the lake bed. Empirically, I'd say that they add a little to the finished product too.

I may sail up river with them and see if I can drink the cargo down to the plimsoll line.

Gosh it's pretty round here

Just whizzed over to Lake Kivu, Rwanda (Yes,  sorry these posts are getting hopelessly out of order but apparently, the picky Africans want clean water before national wifi coverage -  Tch!)
The roads through the mountains are a delight to ride and the major hazard, apart from homicidal lorries on the wrong side of the road, is gazing at the view when you should be concentrating on the oncoming traffic,  cheekily borrowing your lane.

Smile for the Muzungu

A quick picture of smiling children in a slum. There was another arty shot of the narrow passageways between the buildings but its a slum and not a location for a photography project

Coach Trip

The last 30kms into Fort Portal were wet and the last 10 were up a steep muddy track. I'm not great at riding off road so I was tired by the time I arrived. I followed the signs to the "Camp Site" and found 25 drunk young Kampalans. After a few questions about the bike and my trip, I was immediately given a beer and an invite into town on their booze bus. A blinding evening of beer and twerking
(Photo to follow)

The Curse of Charley Boorman

I stopped to take this tired old cliché of a photo. (Ewan & Charley took it at the same place I believe).
To punish me for my vanity, the Gods of Doing Things Properly made the battery go flat and the bike wouldn't restart.
Lots of enthusiastic locals pushed it to "Uganda Qwik Fit" where we jump started it. I rode the next 140 hard miles without stopping, in case it wouldn't restart.
Quite tiring because they haven't quite built all of the road yet.

What the Cluck?

It's always worth starting your day by popping down to the local slum. Amongst all the poverty and hardship I did manage to find Clarence the pink chicken

Pre flight checks

A rather dull one I'm afraid:

Pretty good flight down and got to bed at 2am. Woken at 5am by a family of hornbills (Harry, Hermione, Hagrid and Hinckley-Point) engaged in a Who Can Squawk The Loudest competition
I turned on the light to add emphasis to my hornbill haranguing but no electricity.... and indeed, still none at 7pm as I type this. All very well having hi tech phones but no power - no network.

I then met up with Ian and now have temporary ownership of a cracking KLR 650. A quick test ride through Kampala (including a presidential visit and a police holiday) convinced me that I haven't fully understood the East African highway code yet. The traffic, and indeed it's effects on me, are best described as "brownian"

Still, a last bit of shopping tomorrow morning (new underwear) and I should be good to go

And for those who care about such things. I'd reckon Hagrid won

And now, over to the weather centre

Ooh lumme, it's looking wet in East Africa. 

If I'd just wanted to ride around in the p1ssing rain and see monkeys, I could have stayed in the UK and bought a fortnight's pass for Longleat. 

Oh well, "We get the weather we're sent" as a philosphical old lady recently said to me. And when I'm sliding down a muddy mountain on my arse, I shall draw comfort from those wise words

Competition Corner

Study the pictures below and decide which of these creatures becomes the cause of my urgent medical evacuation back to Blighty

 

 

Tiebreaker: Complete the following sentence in an apt and amusing way

"Frankly, Officer, I wasn't in the least bit surprised when Chris got bummed off a hippo because..... "

Whoops

Well that wasn't a clever thing to do just before setting off. My chances of out running a hippo have just diminished considerably thanks to this little knock I picked up at North London TKD yesterday. Not broken but it smarts a bit. And I can't think it's going to like being stuffed into motorcycle boots for 2 weeks. Still, it is a pleasing colour. 

Health and Safety

With D-Day looming, I’m doing a few last bits of administration:





The first job is to pull together all of the necessary documentation: Passport, driving licence, etc. Oh and I ought to spell check “beqweath” because I’m anxious that my collection of stuffed animals lives on after I, myself, have been stuffed by a horny hippo.

Also as you can see, I’m just about to start my course of special anti malarial tablets. I got them cheap off eBay and the man reckons they’ll also cover me for Yellow Fever, Hep B and sort out my Hyperemesis Gravidarum. [Don’t worry – he’s only put them in a Smarties tube to get round the 1968 Medicines Act but I’m assured that they are 100% pukka.]. Apparently, the purple ones are extra special and will greatly increase my manhood........which is nice because let’s face it, it has been a source of disappointment for some time.

To answer some questions....

Some people have expressed surprise that I’ll be travelling on my own.

Well, the alternative isn’t always better....

  

“But Chris”, I hear you ask, “What if you get attacked by 400lbs of sexually frustrated lion?”  

So here’s a picture of a very mad but very brave “lion whisperer“ showing you how to deal with exactly this eventuality

 

 

In fact, I’ve been practising the technique on my neighbours’ ginger Tom with a fair degree of success......

 

Packing Practice Prevents Pachyderm Penetration

With a little over 3 weeks until my flight, I thought I should start thinking about packing - Ewan and Charlie made such a fuss over what to take but really it’s a piece of p1ss:



(Note: Blogger needs a Rotate Image facility)

• Credit card
• Toothbrush
• Map
• Spare pants
• Jackie Collins for the flight 

Mind you I’m not sure about the toothpaste me Nan lent me – very peculiar taste. Still with it being rutting season for hippos, it may prove useful

Quo Vadis?

Hopefully Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania

The plan is to fly into Kampala, Uganda and spend a day sorting out the bike and documentation. After the aborted attempt to ride around Uganda earlier this year, I have arranged to hire a Kawasaki KLR 650 from a very nice ex-pat, more of whom later.

Once fuelled and ready for take off, I should then ride off to Fort Portal, in western Uganda. After that it should be south-ish to Rwanda where the detailed planning starts to unravel a little