Kampala, Uganda and 100 UN countries

Leaving Seychelles, the airport is quite scenic.

Arriving in Uganda, there was ice on the wing!

Despite being the capital and largest city, the airport is an hour away from Kampala, in Entebbe. Since I was arriving at midnight, I set up a van through the hotel to make sure I could get a reliable ride and pass out en route to Kampala.

There’s a new highway with smooth lanes and tollbooths that haven’t started operating yet, so driving on this was really fun.

I used more points at a Protea Marriott that was MUCH nicer than I’d expected for the minimal amount of points needed. I had a great welcome to my 100th country.

Free Coke and Sprite? Sure!

I had a great free breakfast, was super excited that they had soy milk for coffee, and then the guys working the front gate had a ton of laughs when I walked out showing my tattoos and jumped on the back of the uber moto I’d requested. Clearly, they don’t see a lot of people staying at this hotel and jumping on the back of a moto.

For about 50 cents, the price can’t be beat. My first stop was to the bus station to get a ticket for the night bus to Rwanda, then I worked my way back toward the hotel after seeing the city all day.

At the bus station, despite showing my passport, they had a really hard time with my name on the ticket. It luckily didn’t matter.

I couldn’t go into the grounds or the mosque itself without paying a visitor’s fee, which I refused, so I pressed on.

The greenish building is the train station, which is mostly abandoned now and no longer runs passenger trains.

I’ve definitely never seen an ad to study abroad in Northern Cyprus (breakaway, de facto independent but unrecognized country)!

I had an awesome, cheap lunch at this vegetarian Indian restaurant. Of course, it’s called Govinda’s. I’d wager more than 50% of the vegetarian Indian restaurants in the world are called Govinda’s. It was delicious.

Pressing on, I walked a bunch, which seemed to be a surprise to the moto and taxi drivers. They were consistently shocked when I turned down rides. They don’t seem used to foreigners walking.

I passed the golf course and saw this sign that I found really sad, advertising BBQ of all kinds of exotic African animals.

I passed some kind of government building and a market then caught a moto back to the hotel. I got a regular taxi to take me and my suitcase to the bus station, and it was MUCH slower than a moto, since we had to actually sit in the traffic.

At the bus terminal, I got a lot of stares and put on long sleeves to try to reduce them. I took Jaguar bus, because it has the best safety record on the route to Rwanda, but the bus sucked, point blank. The backs of all of the seats were broken in a way that you couldn’t choose how much to recline. The seat just laid back, because of broken springs. Of course, whenever the bus started or stopped, everyone got bounced around.

They also found it necessary to play really loud African rap-reggaeton combo music videos the entire trip, which no one wanted. I guess it was keeping the driver awake, which is important, so I put in ear plugs and didn’t complain.

I later realized that I crossed the equator on this bus, but I wasn’t paying attention and may have been asleep.

The border crossing was a bit strange in its organized disorganization, but we got everything done and rolled into Kigali, Rwanda at super early o’clock.