A long trip north and a short trip south...

A long trip north....

Last weekend, I travelled to Kidepo Valley National park in Uganda's remote northeastern corner, on the border with South Sudan and Kenya. It has some of the most amazing landscapes I have ever seen with rolling savannahs, incredible views of mountain ranges in all three countries and is seemingly uninhabited.  During our game drives and safari walks we saw hardly any other vehicles and very few people. It does, however, host 77 mammal species and around 475 bird specie (including 56 bird of prey).

One of the reasons very few people visit Kidepo, is that for many years,  travel to the park (except by a very expensive chartered flight) was long considered dangerous and difficult. The road via Gulu was closed for almost 20 years because of the Lord's Resistance Army. The alternative route through Karamoja posed the risk of travellers becoming entangled in inter-tribal cattle rustling (and, with it, unsupervised AK47s!)

The complications across both of these routes have now been removed and the areas are safe to travel. In addition, the roads were improved (to some extent...) as part of the park's 50th anniversary in 2012, making the park more accessible.

We took route via Gulu on the way there, which was around a 11 hour drive.

Stopping for burgers and pizza in Gulu

After leaving Gulu and heading further north, the scenery became increasingly beautiful and this was our view on arrival at our camp in the park, as the sun was setting:

We stayed in bandas:

and had various visitors to our camp, including zebras:

patas monkeys:

and a family of warthogs:

There was also a shell garage at the camp!:

We spent two days in the park with our very cheery guide, Sam:

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On the first day we went on an early morning and a late afternoon game drive:

The park in the early morning sunlight

An oribi

Waterbucks

We saw a herd of elephants, including some baby elephants. The mother elephant, however, being protective of her babies, took a dislike to the safari vehicle in front of us and charged at it! They drove off pretty quickly. We found this all quite amusing (until we remembered that we had to drive along the same track...!)

Kidepo apparently has the largest number of buffalo of anywhere in Africa. This is not a surprise as they seemed to be everywhere and, at one point, we were encircled by them!:

A monitor lizard

We saw several lions basking in the sun. These were brothers and sisters, from Tim's pride (Tim being their Dad) and are aged 3 years old.

We soon noticed that the male lion looked quite thin and poorly. The following evening we saw the same lions again, this time lying under a tree (known as a "sausage tree"):

By this time, a guide had been out to see the lions and was of the view that the two male lions were suffering from TB. The following day they were to be treated (done by a stun gun, from a distance to knock them out, and then several injections). We watched the lions for quite some time and it is amazing how they seem completely unbothered by us in a vehicle nearby, staring and taking pictures.

We saw some amazing birds during our time in the park. I couldn't quite capture them on my camera. However, my favourite was the  Abyssinian Ground-Hornbill. I've stolen a pic of this from the internet...(all the other pics in this blog are real though....!!):

On our second day, we went on a three hour walking safari:



All of us on the walking safari

Me on the walking safari!

We were told lots about some of the brilliant flowers and plants. Here are a few of them:

Whilst studiously avoiding any buffalo (who go slightly crazy when confronted by a human on foot), we did manage to get really close to several animals. Standing opposite a giraffe and her baby was pretty incredible:

and we walked towards these zebras:

"Zebra crossing" (I don't think I'll ever tire of that joke...)

In the afternoon we drove to the north of the park, to try and spot some ostriches and go to some hot springs.... We did spot a number of ostriches in the distance. The hot springs were, however, a bit of a disappointment (kind of more like a sulphur puddle...)!

More remarkably, in the early evening, we climbed up a rock (I say climb, I think I was crawling...) with a cool box and some beers to watch the sun set over the park. Our guide had to lead the way as he said lions often sat on the rock...

 

Our safari van from the top of the rock

On day four, we headed back to Kampala, this time via Karamoja. We stopped on the way at Kaabong, not far from the park and the home of some of Juliana's family. They were very welcoming and hospitable and served us chicken with lemon and salt (a surprisingly brilliant combination). They also gave us gifts to take back to Kampala, including fresh mushrooms, lemons, eggs, nuts, necklaces and two live chickens. So we had two extra passengers for the remaining 14 hour drive.

The route back was longer than on the way up and we were slowed down by a few storms (and at times, a slight uncertainty with directions...), but it did give us the opportunity to travel through Karamojo, which was stunning. We travelled through vast, semi-arid plains, with villages home to the pastoral Karamojong people, similar, in many ways, to the Maasai of Kenya.

 After a stop and a curry in Lira, we arrived back into Kampala at sometime after midnight..

A short trip south

Much less spectacular and nearer to home (about 10km from the centre of Kampala), the weekend before, I went to Ggaba to check out the fish market and auction and take a look at Lake Victoria.

These really quite ugly birds are Marabou Storks and are very common in Uganda. Here they are waiting to pounce on some fish:

We watched as the fishing boats came in:

and then the fish was auctioned, to be sold at markets and restuarants across Kampala:

We then walked to nearby Muyonyo. Years ago this was famous for hosting royal yachts and, thought by the explorer Speke to be the "Cowes of Uganda". It is slightly less impressive now, but the resort nearby named after Speke, was a nice place to spend the afternoon relaxing (and getting a little sunburnt) by Lake Victoria: