After being in Kampala for this long I finally had a chance to get out of the city and go for a couple of days to Budongo Forest and Murchison National Park (also known as Kabarega National Park, although this name is hardly heard). I had an agreement with Great Lakes Safaris, a local tour operator which owns a lodge in Budongo Forest, to take pictures of their lodge during my trip to the national park for photos for my project. Fortunately Zuzana could also come and enjoy the time there.
We were leaving from Kampala at 11 in the morning, so we were told to be at the office of the tour operator here in Kampala around 10:30. Amos, the owner of the tour operator was going that day to Gulu, a city in the north of Uganda, so we were travelling with him for the first part of the journey, until the junction where the roads to Gulu and to the park separate. From there a car would be waiting for us and we would go straight to the lodge.
We arrived to the office at 10:30 and... well, one thing you have to know is that here in Africa schedules are just a reference, so it was 12:30 when we were leaving the office heading north to Budongo Forest. And I have to say that Amos is quite punctual, we usually go running together and he normally arrives sharp on time.
After a couple of hours we arrived to the junction, but there had been a problem and the driver who should pick us up couldn't arrive there on time, so we decided that instead of waiting for him we would take a taxi to the next town where the driver would be waiting for us. Amos arranged the transport with the taxi driver and booked the whole back seat of the taxi for the two of us (plus our backpacks) while in the two front seats there were sitting the driver, two women and a child. It is the first time in my life that I saw two people sitting in the driver's seat.
20 kilometres later we arrived to Masindi, the town where the driver was waiting for us. We changed to his car and in less than half an hour we arrived to the lodge. The place is nice. The lodge has a main building with the common area and several cabins around in between the trees, which makes you feel like being in the middle of the forest.
And the fact is that you are in the middle of the forest, you can hear all the sounds of the forest: monkeys, insects, birds... especially at night, when everything is quiet but you still feel that the forest never sleeps. You can have an idea about how much in the forest it is by taking a look in Google Maps.
The small lighter green things that you see are the roofs of the lodge, and a bit on the left you see the road crossing the forest. I guess that there is a point to the lodge being called Budongo Eco Lodge.
Budongo Forest is the largest mahogany forest in East Africa, it has around 800 square kilometres and an incredible biodiversity, with several endangered species, it is also one of the best places in Uganda for bird watching. But on top of that, Budongo Forest is famous for being home of a population of over 600 chimpanzees, and that's why since 2006 Jane Goodall Institute has been carrying out an ecotourism project in Budongo Forest, and Budongo Eco Lodge is part of it.
Chimpanzees live in groups, and some of these groups in Budongo Forest are habituated to humans. What does it mean that they are habituated groups? Habituated animals are wild animals, they live free and behave as any other wild ones. The difference is that if you meet a non-habituated animal in the wild, it is highly probable that it goes away, but habituated animals are used to seeing humans around and they don't identify them as a threat, so they might stay and continue their normal life. One of these habituated groups lives in the area around Budongo Eco Lodge, and it has been monitored during years so we can learn more about how chimpanzees live. This group is the one that is visited by tourists (accompanied by a guide and in groups limited to 8 people and 1 hour of contact with the chimps) and at the same time guides observe their behaviour, which is registered afterwards in a chimpanzee diary.
In our planning, the activity for the first morning after our arrival was chimpanzee tracking. Before leaving, the guide explained us a few things the forest, how to behave there, how to find chimpanzees following different tracks, how to act when we meet them and that it is probable that we will find them but that, of course, it is not guaranteed.
A group of chimpanzees owns a territory of 10-30 square kilometres, fortunately the one close to the lodge is only about 10 square kilometres. It is possible to start the tracking from the lodge, in fact it is quite common, but that day other guides had spotted some chimpanzees at 4 kilometres from the lodge, so at 7:30 we got into a car and took the road crossing the forest to start tracking the chimps from another point. Once we reached there, we entered the forest and started to look for the chimpanzees.
Well, the fact is that it is highly probable to see chimpanzees in Budongo Forest but, as I told you before, even if they are habituated they are wild, and you can't book wildlife. We spent almost 5 hours hiking in the forest but that day we hardly saw any chimpanzee track. Just when we were heading back to the lodge we heard clear chimpanzee calls so we headed in the direction of the calls. We must have been close to them, because we could even smell them, but we couldn't see anything. The guide told us that they were probably another group which is not habituated. The boundary of the territory of the habituated group is close to the lodge and sometimes it happens that when a group of chimpanzees goes deep inside their territory, another group may enter their territory to steal their food. So if they were this "rebel" group and they saw us coming, they probably went back to their territory.
Fortunately, there are more things to see in a forest than chimpanzees. To begin with the forest itself, it is really nice to hike in Budongo Forest, it is beautiful and it is flat, even if the temperatures rise a bit during the day, the weather isn't really uncomfortable, so hiking in Budongo is quite pleasant. And besides, you can enjoy more animals, like big snails climbing on branches:
Or birds like the black-and-white-casqued hornbill.
Or the olive baboon, which you can see in the forest or sitting in the middle of the road.
We also saw another monkey called black-and-white colobus monkey. It is a pity I don't have a clear picture of them, but sometimes chimpanzees hunt them so they are really fast and nervous. And I have the feeling that they don't like being photographed. There was a tree close to the lodge where from time to time you can see some of them eating, but as soon as I grabbed my camera they would run away. So far this is the best I can show you, hopefully I will be able to show you something better next time I go back to the forest.
After the whole morning in the forest we went back to the lodge, had lunch and then I spent the afternoon taking pictures of the lodge. It is not a luxury lodge but it is a nice place to stay and it is very environmentally friendly, with solar power (even for the hot water), water supply from rainwater, composting toilets, sustainable waste management... and at the same time it supports the local communities by training and employing locals, commissioning vegetables from their farm, outsourcing the laundry service or selling their handicrafts in the craft shop of the lodge. Even the cabins have been built with sustainably harvested pine wood. I have to say that I liked the place.
The next day we planned to go to Murchison Falls National Park, which is known for its falls and the wildlife you can see in its savannah. The best time to watch wildlife is always early in the morning and late in the evening, close to the sunset, so we got up really early because we wanted to arrive to the park in time to take the first boat crossing the river at 7:00 to enter the park. After 56 kilometres we were the first car waiting for the ferry.
This was one of the great experiences in Uganda, reaching the bank of the Nile at sunrise while you see some hippos shyly sticking their heads out from the water. A magical moment.
The Nile? Does the Nile River pass through Uganda? I guess that at this point we could talk a little bit about the Nile. If we follow the river from its delta in the Mediterranean Sea, the Nile flows through Egypt, where it is most known. Upstream from Egypt it enters Sudan where, close to its capital, Khartoum, it splits up in two: the Blue Nile and the White Nile. The Blue Nile has its source in the Lake Tana in Ethiopia, that is clear; while the longer White Nile still has a long way ahead of it, a way which is not so clear.
It flows through Sudan and enters South Sudan, first as Bahr El Abyad (which means White River in Arabic), afterwards changing its name to Bahr El Jabal, until it enters Uganda where it takes the name of Albert Nile.
If we follow Albert Nile, we reach Lake Albert, on the border of Murchison Falls National Park, from where it continues as Victoria Nile, which is the river we crossed. The Victoria Nile then finally reaches Lake Victoria in what it is known as the source of the Nile, close to the city of Jinja in Uganda.
But that's where the problem begins. Where is the real source of the Nile? There are different opinions for that. It was John Hanning Speke who in 1862 discovered the source of the Nile on the northern shore of the Victoria Lake, and Stanley, after meeting Dr Livingstone (I presume), who in 1875 confirmed Speke's discovery, establishing the source of the Nile in the Victoria Lake. But of course, Lake Victoria gets its water from many other rivers, so if you want to find the furthest headstream from the Mediterranean Sea you must follow one of these rivers.
The longest course follows the Kagera River through Tanzania and Rwanda. But this river splits again in two: one is the Rurubu River, and its tributary Ruvyironza River is often referred as the furthest source of the Nile, in Burundi. The other one is the Nyabarongo River, which flows through Rwanda, changing its name first to Mwogo River and then to Rukarara River.
An expedition in 2006 claimed to have reached the source the Rukarara as the furthest source of the Nile. But in my opinion, they will have to do another expedition to the source of the Ruvyironza River, otherwise how can they claim anything with certainty?
Since it seems that it isn't quite clear, meanwhile they reach a conclusion, for me the source of the Nile is in the Lake Victoria, as discovered by the great explorers of 19th century, and the furthest headstream of the water flowing through the Nile must be somewhere in Burundi or Rwanda.
Back to our trip to Murchison Falls, at 7:00 we crossed the Victoria Nile, a guide from the park joined us in the car and we started the game ride.
We spent the whole morning driving through the roads of the park, watching and taking pictures of the animals. Bylon, the General Manager of the lodge was driving the car and every now and then I was asking him to stop or go back a bit when I needed. Around noon we reached the Lake Albert, where we had lunch with a nice view of the hippos in the lake. I think it is better if you see all this by yourselves.
There are also lions and leopards in Murchison Falls, but they are not seen too often. They can be easily found in other parks of Uganda, like Kidepo National Park, in the north east of the country. It is definitely much easier to see lions in Kenya, but you will probably feel like in a zoo surrounded by cars. Here in Uganda it is not so overcrowded and most of the time we spent in Murchison Falls our car was the only one we could see all around.
After lunch we came back to the jetty where the ferry left us in the morning. There we took a boat for a cruise through the Victoria Nile heading up to the Murchison Falls.
From the boat you can see again hippos, buffaloes, elephants, crocodiles, different kinds of birds...
Finally the boat reaches the point from where you see the Murchison Falls. After everybody on the boat sees the falls and takes pictures, the boat takes you back to the jetty. But there is another option, instead of going back by the boat, you can make a short hike to Baker's Summit at the top of the falls.
The boat left us at the beginning of the trail and we started the hike. I highly recommend it, we took our time, we were taking pictures and enjoying the landscape.
I had already seen the falls on many pictures, and I always thought that they were nothing special, and maybe you will feel a bit of the same when seeing these pictures. Now I know that you really have to be here to appreciate them.
Maybe you can get an idea if you think like this. Take a look at the Victoria Nile.
It is a big river, wide... Well, now think that all that water has to pass through that "small", only about 10m, crack between rocks. The river narrows and roars and starts to run faster until it hits the rocks, and there it boils and roars, all the power of the Nile compressed in a small opening between two rocks. It is impressive, and it makes you feel how powerful the river is.
We spent some more time taking pictures and enjoying the river.
You can also reach the top of the falls by car, there is a parking just couple of minutes from Baker's Summit. As you can imagine, I was taking pictures there as long as I had some light, so by the time I finished and we got to the parking there was only Bylon waiting for us. After paying the fees for the hike and talking a bit with the staff there, we left the parking heading to the lodge.
It was already getting dark and we were already thinking of the shower, the dinner and resting after the long day. But the last adventure of the day was still to come.
A bit after the parking, there is a point where the road goes steeply uphill and is full of gravel. And that is where our car refused to keep going and after several tries it got stuck in a ditch. Fortunately we were still near the parking so Bylon could go back and ask the people working there to come and help us. After one hour pushing and pulling the car and removing earth and gravel with a spade we finally managed to get the car out of the ditch and continue our way to the lodge, sweaty and tired.
My plan for the next day was going on habituation with the chimpanzees. There are two kinds of activities in Budongo Forest. One is chimpanzee tracking, which is a half day activity where, as I told you before, you go with a guide in a group of maximum 8 people and the stay with the chimps is limited to one hour. The other option is called habituation. It is a full day activity and it is limited to one or two people accompanied by a guide. This was my activity for today.
Since Zuzana couldn't see any chimpanzees the first day, we agreed that she could join us with another guide during the morning for chimpanzee tracking and then she would return to the lodge for lunch.
Around 8 in the morning we were leaving the lodge and entering the forest. That morning the humidity created a thin mist, which together with the morning light was giving the forest a magical appearance.
After hiking for not a long time the guide told me: "there, a chimp, on the track". Again, another very special moment. It was still early in the morning and there was not much light. About 20 metres in front of me there was an area with some thick vegetation making the forest a bit darker. I looked carefully and in between the mist I saw a figure sitting on the track and slowly moving. I had no specific expectation about what a chimpanzee is like, and even though I know that chimpanzees are not small monkeys, I found it surprisingly big. After a few seconds, it got up and slowly and quietly started to move away from us until it disappeared in the shade.
As we kept on walking, we saw more chimpanzees, following those we saw on the ground or following the calls we could hear in the forest. At that time of the day most of them were on the trees feeding with fruits.
After some time Zuzana returned to the lodge and the guide and I continued observing more chimps, trying to get a clear view of them, so I could take as many pictures as possible.
After midday, when it becomes hotter, many of the chimpanzees climb down from the trees to rest and interact with other members of the group. Maybe I was lucky that day, but I had the feeling that it is really worth going for habituation instead of chimpanzee tracking. During that time I spent there I could see how chimps live, while if you go for chimpanzee tracking most of the time you will see how chimpanzees eat. I could see how they interact between different members, how the alpha male rules the group... It was very interesting.
Later, when the sun starts to get down and the heat is disappearing, the chimpanzees go back to the top of the trees looking for more food. Then the afternoon group of chimpanzee tracking came and they were watching them eating while we were again trying to find a clear view of them so I could get more pictures.
Around 4 pm, after spending more than 7 hours with the chimpanzees, the light between the trees started to be too dim and the guide and I decided to go back to the lodge. I really had a great time that day.
After the whole day in the forest with the camera in my hands (almost 2,5 Kg) pointing to the trees I was quite tired; happy but tired. It was the perfect moment for a shower, relaxing, having a dinner and going to sleep.
And then it was time to go back to Kampala, to stop being photographer and to become manager again. We were driven to Masindi and from there we took a matatu to Kampala.
I will have to go back again (fortunately), one day shooting wildlife could be enough if you are really lucky, but this was not the case. If everything goes well and the project goes ahead, I should be spending more time in Murchison Falls and photographing chimpanzees.
I am already looking forward to be back in the savannah and in the forest.
