The Road to Gulu

Photos: 2 of the pot holes and also the Nile River.

Saturday Nov 10 9pm: We have just returned from Gulu and it was an experience we will never forget. Friday morning, we took off for Gulu. The road to Gulu is incredibly hard. It takes 7+ hours to get there although it is only 350 kms away from Kampala. The problem is that for over half of the journey, the road is so badly corroded, there are huge crater-like pot holes everywhere! Drivers weave there way back and forth across the road. No real sense of 2 lane highway here. More like - get through this without tipping or losing an axle! It was brutal. Once we get into the North Uganda area, the road is much better. This is due to the fact that no one dared travel up there until recently so the roads are in great condition relatively speaking.

About 2 hours out from Gulu we crossed the Nile, which actually starts in Uganda! It is the longest river in the world. The area around the river is where the rebels known as the Lord's Resistance Army used to do their atrocities - kidnap and steal from drivers and travelers on foot. It was so tiring but we had some time to meet some people and take a few photos. More on that in the next post. But then we headed off to return to Gulu today (Saturday) but we ended up driving through a storm and also into the night for the last 3 hours. Incredible! We were so tired once we got back - it is so intense and although I wasn't driving, I was watching the road intensely. There were maybe 8-10 trucks broken down or tipped over from bad calculations. And there were heaps of people walking the road even at night! Crazy! Some photos of the trip including some shots of the potholes, trucks and people!