3rd Day’s of Motorcycle Adventure tour in Uganda

We had a wonderful night after the long day of yesterday, everyone slept good and rested enough, we woke up at 8am and found our breakfast already waiting for us at the table, enjoyed the hot tea while listening to birds and wildlife around us, our guide told us that we should leave here by 10am so we have 2hours to have breakfast, freshen up and pack our things on the bike, so we did.

today ride is pretty smooth, guide told us it will be a long day ahead and we cant know how to road will be until we get there because this side of the road is under construction and we cant know how much work has been done until we are on the road, so we finished our breakfast and head out, we took a shortcut this time and within 20mins we were at the park entrance gate, this gate is the nearest gate and if you are heading to Fort portal town then this is the shortest route, we arrived at the gate and said our goodbyes to the park and head out, very surprised to see that few meters out of the gate and all the communities are living, i asked the guide if they experience wild life in these communities as we are very near to the park and he said “yes, its has become part of their lives” they have learnt to live with it.

we started riding, for the early part the road had been very smooth but as we kept head out the road started become bit tricky, lots of potholes, dust, but lots and lots of potholes, we kept riding and stopped every after 20mins to take breath and relax, drink water, see local life this side of Uganda, for about 1hour ride we reached to a very nice newly paved road, we hit all our gears up and open the throttles, around half past noon we arrived at the small town called Hoima, we stopped and decided to have some drinks and walked around, some of us wanted to grab a bite so the guide took us to a small stall where they sale Rolex, I didn’t mean Rolex watch, it’s a local fast food, its just fried eggs rolled up with pita bread which they call “Chapati”, the word Rolex came out from  “Rolled Eggs” initially this fast food called Rolled Eggs but the time went by it became rolex from Rolled eggs,, well it was not bad at all,

we all had few bites of it and most of us really liked it, and we continue with our journey, still on the paved road but a very beautiful views, one can clearly see Lake Albert on your Ride hand side while riding on this road, the Lake Albert is the lake where Uganda shares its Border from Uganda, so we are literally ride parallel to the border of Congo, high Mountains, big tea plantations have started welcoming us, we are on the time and stopped to take some pics of baboons on the road side, when our guide shouted that bad road is ahead and we will take lots of time to pass that patch so we should not stop anywhere for now because we need to get to Fort Portal before it gets dark, everyone agreed and we could see the weather is changing, from sunny to bit cloudy, well after around 30km of riding all of sudden the paved road disappeared and we found ourselves on the red dusty road and lots of road construction is ongoing, all of sudden we saw our guide who was in front of us stopped and we all stopped behind him, wonder what happened, the guide said that one of us is missing , which was Jerry, he said to wait for 1min if he does not show up then we all wait here and the Joseph will go and check on Jerry, well as he was telling us that Jerry showed up, we were all curious to know what had happened, Jerry Said he fell down while waving back at the locals who were greeting us since we left the park, everywhere we ride locals come out on the side of the roads and wave at us, so i think Jerry decided to wave back at them and lost control on the bike but luckily nothing bad happed and he was going slow and all good, he said locals came to help him carried his bike and put him back on the bike and all good, well the guide said from now on Jerry should not be the last one and should be in the middle of the herd and we continued, after 10mins the clouds become bit heavier and we had some rain pouring down at us but we kept continuing because if we stay here this road can become a nightmare to ride if its wet so we kept slowly but surely, luckily the rain stopped after few minutes and we are still on this under construction road, well now the hard part starting slowly, where you see some loose soil on the road, some potholes, gravel we were just about 2km ahead from the rain and we saw a road block, road is under construction and we have to wait for it to open, Jerry saw some open space and thought he can go around the truck which is blocking the road, well Jerry had another fall, this time it was in mud and was not pretty, we all witnessed it, he is fine but covered in mud totally.

we made sure to have that on pic, haha, we all stopped and picked him up, made sure he is ok, which he was and then Joseph said to wait till the open the road, after 2mins they opened the road for us and we kept riding, its 2pm now and we are getting closer to Fort Portal when Joseph realized that he has a flat tire, we all had to stop, good thing Joseph had all the required tools to fix the Flat tire, he managed to fix it and use Hand pump to put enough pressure in the tire which can take us to nearby gas station where he added more pressure and made sure the puncture which he fixed has no leakage, we had lost almost 45mins in all this process so now we had to ride faster, Joseph said the bad road is almost over and we will have newly paved road for rest of our day journey and he was right.

After 3km all we had was nice paved road and beautiful views of Rwenzori Mountains, huge tea plantations, hills and fresh breeze we can clearly feel that we are getting closer to Fort Portal town. we arrived at Fort portal town and Joseph Stopped on the road side and asked us to gather up, he said “its 4:30pm, so there are two options, the lodge we are going to stay is 30km away from here, we can stay in fort portal town and eat lunch or we continue to lodge and shower, freshen up and have early evening Dinner, what do you guys say? he added, if we stay here and eat lunch which we have no idea how long these guys will take to bring food and then by the time we get to lodge it might get dark”.

we all agreed to go to lodge since all of us had rolex earlier today so none of us had been too hungry, then Joseph called the hotel we were heading to and inform them that we are coming early and would like to have early Dinner so they can start doing our dinner Preparations, we continues and the beautiful views of hills and over looking Kibale Forest never Stopped, it seems so peaceful and full of nature here its hard to believe that we are in Uganda, looks like somewhere on the country side of Switzerland, we arrived at 5:30pm at our lodge, we were greeted at the main entrance of the lodge by their sweet staff members with fresh cold Passion fruit juice, as soon as we come out of the bike and remove our helmets to look around, everyone was shocked how quiet and beautiful this place is, the lodge is sitting right on the shores of the lake and have a very beautiful and green garden, its actually and ecosystem lodge and runs by local communities who are very sweet people, before even we finished our welcome juice we were taken to our tents and showed where the hot showers and toilets are and they as well took our dinner orders, every single one of us was dying for a hot shower and wanted to get out of the motorcycle gears, it is very cold out here so for sure the hot shower is needed, as soon as we finished the shower and went back to our tents, the lodge staff came to our tents and told us that get ready and your dinner awaits your, everyone was really shocked that is a great service, we are staring at each other with question marks while making our way to the restaurant and found our food was there waiting for us, great everyone was hungry and the food was just super delicious, we all ate while talking about the today adventure of what we saw and what we missed, it has been a great joy to ride the Motorcycles on this road, today ride was full of wonder full views, off-road challenges and full of beautiful colors, after dinner we all sat next to fire and enjoyed our beers as one by one each of us going to bed after beer to call it early night and get some rest.