the Nile

After Kampala, I headed to Jinja for some white water rafting in the Nile river. I don't have any photos (they were expensive) but wow, what a crazy experience! Especially considering I had zero rafting experience before. Over the course of the day, we rafted about 25km, through eight rapids. My raft consisted of a group of four: two Germans traveling together, a Spaniard traveling solo, and me! Our raft flipped over twice, and I found myself flying out and landing in the water, not really knowing what was happening and with a large wave always ready to hit me, while I struggled to time my breath right. I swallowed a lot of Nile water that day. I'm recovering from the massive sunburns, but still have bruises on my stomach, arms, and legs from the water / flying paddles.

Next, I spent two nights at a hostel/campsite in the nearby town of Bujagali. It was right by the Nile and I could have spent a week there, just relaxing. It was such a fun yet peaceful environment. I met lots of travellers from all over the world, including one man who was doing a round-the-world trip on a motorbike, having started in London and already made his way down west Africa and now coming up east Africa to go to Asia. So cool, courageous, ambitious.

So happy!

Later, I went to Jinja, which as I wrote before, is the most touristy place I have ever been to and probably will ever go to! Still, it was cool to go to the "Source of the Nile". With that said, the claim that the Nile starts in Lake Victoria is false, since lots of rivers feed into Lake Victoria… where the Nile technically starts is complicated and disputed but probably actually somewhere in Rwanda or Burundi. Obviously the guide did not tell me this, I read it in the British Airways magazine on the plane to Nairobi.

For the tourists

Adorable

A small bust of Mahatma Gandhi. Some of his ashes were released into the Nile here.