Queen Elizabeth

Ali, how come you decided to start blipping your travels from halfway through the trip rather than starting at the beginning? Well, I'm glad you asked... Given the length of this journal entry, you probably won't be, however.

On the last day(!) of the accidentally extended trip to Uganda, my laptop, and with it the first 2 weeks of photographs and videos I took, was stolen. On the way to the airport. The bloody airport! The pain of losing that many photographs is something I hope I never experience ever again. I am by no means an amazing photographer, but there were a few photographs amongst those lost that I was seriously bloody chuffed with. They're not photographs of wildlife or landscapes (I can go back and take those again), but they were the photos of us working on our project... Us welding, angle-grinding, sawing and fixing up our runt of a project into the beast of an engine that it became. Those can't be replaced and that's what I was upset about. Hence, the reason for the first half of the trip missing from Blip.

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Please see here for some context around the trip plus coverage of the first 2-3 weeks from The Bro's perspective. From the 1st September onwards we basically did the same thing as each other for 2 weeks. His photos are sick.

To accompany each of the (remaining) blip entries I have for Uganda, I shall be serving the relative entry with a music anthem - a Uganthem - that we heard a lot whilst we were out there. It might be some Ugandan music or it might be one of the obscure Western Pop songs that they like to listen to... No doubt they'll all be a surprise.

Today's anthem is by Young Mulo and it's called Love Me... It's killer.

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It was a hell of an early start today (5,30am!) for our trip down to Queen Elizabeth Nation Park, from our base in Fortportal. It was pitch black when we left the hostel. The sky was totally absent of any hint of colour, just the stars shining down from the endless canopy of darkness, just the rhythmic blinking of the odd airplane tail light.

It was a bum-numbing 2 hour trip to National Park. As we crossed the equator (Colin' GPS would contest that where the sign was wasn't actually geographically correct for the true equator location) we stopped for some sunrise shots. Needless to say it was absolutely spectacular. The only way to describe it would be Classic Africa. It's exactly as impossible as how you would imagine it to be; a rich fiery red ball emerging from beyond the horizon spilling light down on to the savanna and everything below. Every cliche in the book, and then some.

We had a slight cock-up regarding our tour guide after someone forgot where we were supposed to be meeting him and we didn't enter the Park until later, around 8am or so. In terms of game drives it's either dead early in the morning or as the sun is setting. Otherwise the sun's too high and all the animals bugger off in to the shade because it's hot and they're sensible like that. I was prepared to write off the whole day. A bloody early start for essentially nothing. How wrong I was.

The lady at the gate sorted us with a guide and we got off on our escapade. The usual culprits were up first: cob, warthogs, more antelope and hippos etc. It's a shame that not much attention is paid to cob as they're so common. They are actually incredibly striking and rather photogenic animals. However, they're ten-a-penny so people get a few obligatory shots and then bugger off in search of something rarer. Humans are very fickle.

Then we struck absolute jackpot. Lions. A few of them. Close. Just 20-25m away there were some lions just chilling out and acting all cute. In the background there was a herd of antelope so we were begging the lions to rise up and nail a cob, but nothing. Lions epitomise the phrase 'scaredy-cat' because they'll only attack prey from behind, and these cob were staring down the lionesses. The way that the lions lope around just oozes majestic-ness (new word) and power. I really didn't want to leave, because as soon as we drove off I knew I'd fell 'Bugger, we just drove away from wild lions!' Yep. We had to move on, though.

Ultimately we were heading towards a place to eat and to relax before getting our boat cruise around the Kazinga Channel where we saw plenty more animals (and this photo was taken). Hippos, crocs and all kinds of different birds that I knew nothing about.

We were missing elephants and leopards. As we were leaving the park we spotted a mother and baby chowing down from a bush about 15m back from the bath. That was incredible, but it wasn't a whole herd. The herd appeared once we had totally left the park and started making our way back to Fortportal. Crossing the road, causing a small back-up of articulated lorries and other people carriers, these elephants were making their way to a new stomping ground. The angle wasn't ideal but being this close was just amazing.

We ordered food from the taxi so it was waiting for us when we got back to the hostel. This was a genius move. It meant we were ready for a big night out as today was the first day that the whole crew from Warwick was united. Well, not everyone was up for a night out so it petered down until it was just Team Colin and Kowse (from UMU) heading in to town. On a Sunday, with 10 of us it wasn't exactly easy to catch some Bodas (motorbike taxis) in to town, so we just started walking. After 10 minutes of the walk in to town the first vehicle drove past us and we heard Allan, Allan and Allan (long story) yelling at us from this car. They'd hitch hiked in a 5 seater Mercedes 4x4 which pulled over at the roadside. The remaining 7 of us all piled in to what I can only assume was a very confused Ugandan man's car... 4 of us in the boot, 5 in the back seats and one in the front we headed down to Forrest Club. Thank God we didn't get pulled over by the police.

We hauled ourselves out at Forrest, stayed there for a while but the vibe wasn't what it usually is so we headed to Club Africana where the music was much better... None of this Western rubbish, just pure Afro-beats.

In what turned out to be a bloody long day, we eventually got back to the hostel at 4am after a very successful day.

Great night out.

TL;DR... Laptop got stolen so I've lost half the photographs from the trip; went to Queen Elizabeth National Park; hitch-hiked in to town and had a great night out

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Minimalism!!! Some Ugandan fishermen rowing their boat around the channel looking for Nile Perch. Given the scope of our project (you'll have to check out The Bro's Blip to find out more) I started paying a lot more attention to how fishermen were getting around the lakes. Nothing spectacular, but an interesting shot that I quite like.