This, that and t'other

It was five in the morning and the bus park in Kampala, Uganda, felt like a nightmare. Two opposite rows of bright headlights punched through a haze of sooty diesel fumes and darkness to create an intimidating corridor. As my cousin, her Ugandan friend and I slipped and slopped through the mud and puddles, people appeared from between buses, offering to carry our bags.

We were here to get the bus to Buhoma, a south-western town, 12 hours away, which sits on the border of the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.

We hoisted ourselves on to the long single-decker, three seats per aisle on one side, and two on the other. It had knobbly tyres and a high ground clearance – we’d discover why later.

We waited for two hours while people jumped on and off board trying to flog watches, pens, handbags, footballs, radios, torches and medicinal drugs – all I wanted was some mint imperials and boiled sweets. Alas, they never came.

Eventually, the bus wobbled through the plethora of muddy potholes out of the bus park, and on to the equally-rutted road.

It was only as we were moving along that I realised I’d made a big mistake. My window had a pane of glass missing. Uganda might sit on the equator, but, when you are sat next to an open window on a bus, it can be fairly chilly in the morning.

We surged along for nine hours, with plenty of high-speed overtaking, until we reached Rukungiri. From there on, the bus’s average speed dropped from 60 to 6mph. This place marked the end of the asphalt and the start of dirt roads which rested on the sides of steep hillsides.

Every time the bus crunched into first gear and edged into another crater its suspension croaked, it leant further towards the edge, and I mentally wrote another line for my obituary in the local paper back home.

After three petrifying hours we arrived safely in Butogota at 7pm.

As I jumped off the bus on to the clayey ground, my eyes felt like my sockets were caving in, my brain felt like it was tightly wrapped in sandpaper, and my stomach was more intent on making stuff go up rather than down. I was dehydrated. To make matters worse, I was orange. Not because I had a tan, but because of the dust that had blasted me thanks to the open window.

An hour later, with my head nestled against a hedge at the Buhoma Community Rest Camp, my stomach was making a peace offering to the local mosquitoes.

The next six days were a complete contrast to my dystopian day. The Bwindi scenery was like a child’s drawing, with all the mountains following a uniform triangular shape; like a series of overlapping pyramids, each covered in trees. The smell was earthy, smoky and warm, and the people were friendly and charming.

One thing troubled me though; there was only one way back to Kampala.