The Ugandan Loop, Part III

And last but not least, here is The Ugandan Loop, Part III.

These images cover Days 7-10: from Katakwi, through Gulu City and Masinga, back to Kampala. There are no images from Day 7, as it was a very long day spent entirely on paved roads. (Boring! ;-))

The main details are in the image captions, as always. If you enjoy the post, please like, comment, and share!

Namaste,

—jim

Even now, a full week after arriving back in Kampala, I continue coughing up the remnants of orange dust I accumulated during my ride. Almost always due to trucks like these (which are the kind that carry things like the charcoal bundles from my previous post---and can be very hard to get around at times).
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Mid-morning after leaving Gulu City, I had managed to take a wrong turn on one of my preferred backroads. There was NO traffic there except an occasional motorcycle. One of those was driven by a man named Patrick. After we passed each other a couple of times, we started talking and I ended up spending almost the entire day with him, visiting different members of his family on their various parcels of the family farm (a very large 335 hectares in total).
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The first stop was his brother Churchill's home, where the brothers discussed a legal matter, and gave me a bit of history of their family and of the region.
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One of the nephews, giving haircuts to all the kids in the family
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They had the clippers wired up to an old auto battery that they charged with a solar panel. NOTE: Electricity was prevalent and reliable throughout almost all of the rural areas I visited. A couple of towns only had power during specified hours, like things used to be back in Pokhara, Nepal.
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Patrick.
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Barber at work.
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Sister-in-law and another cousin (I think? I met too many folks to remember all the specifics two days later when I had a chance to write things down.)
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Two Brothers: Churchill (left) and Patrick (right).
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Some very VERY annoying guy on a motorcycle. Patrick insisted on taking the photo...
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Some of the traditional homes in Patrick's family compound. We visited his mother here, and I got to take a close look. Because of the situation, I didn't ask to take a bunch of interior or up-close photos--their hospitality was already overwhelming and it seemed intrusive at that moment.
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Hmmm...seems like I've heard of this Deere guy before. Can that be??
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More random encounters. Any time I stopped for a cold drink or a rolex or just to enjoy some midday shade, I met people. If the conversations went well, or my new acquaintances asked, I'd get some photos.
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Finding a cold soda along the road often meant stopping in a "bar." Basically, if I could see a shelf with liquor bottles on it, I knew I'd also find a refrigerator with some kind of soft drinks inside.
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This family was just hanging out in front of their bar early on a Saturday afternoon. In the shade.
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These are some folks who are staying in one of Patrick's under-construction homes--doing the work and staying there until it's complete. It was yet another situation where I'd have liked to photograph more things, but...it wasn't the right time to do so.
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Stefan & Martina--the only touring (or non-Ugandan) cyclists I have seen since arriving. They were riding the highway to Masindi, and I just couldn't pass them by without asking for a couple of photos.
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A very interesting fellow I met on my final day. He had been in the Ugandan military 20 years earlier--stationed in Iraq and with the job of guarding the perimeter of various American encampments there. He had some great, not-so-flattering, and very much unsurprising stories about our presence there.
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More random roadside encounters.
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Finally back in Kampala, I sought out a bar called the Log In. It's run by an old friend of a man named Ronald--a Ugandan I sat next to on the inbound flight from Doha. Ronald came and picked me up in Matugga on my first night (see Part I of this series). He brought me here to meet his friend and have a couple of Nile beers (one of the most popular local brews), so I thought I'd try to find it on my way back into town. Success!
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The Transglobalist
Photographer, cyclist, paraglider pilot, backpacker, skydiver, writer, explorer, musician, hitchhiker, digital nomad, and American dissident.

Old Town Mombasa

September 30, 2024

The Ugandan Loop, Part II

September 14, 2024

The Ugandan Loop, Part I

September 13, 2024

The Ugandan Loop, Part III

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