Self Driving in Uganda: Important Things to Know
Self driving in Uganda or preferably self drive car hire is on crucial decision to make if you decide to travel to Uganda. A Self drive in Uganda requires you to hire a car from a local car rental agency and drive yourself un-guided. This is a more common practice done by return visitors to Uganda that feel they can do it as well. However there are many first time visitors to Uganda who know and affirm they can do it on their own.
Self drive destinations in Uganda are mainly the top tourist attraction scattered around the country. From tracking mountain gorillas in the southern part of Uganda to wildlife safaris in over 10 national game reserves east-west-north and south.
Self drive car hire requires you to have wide knowledge about Uganda by taking off months and reading each and every spot about Uganda before you decide to travel on a self drive car hire. There are a few things you actually need to know and affirm you can handle for the incredible experience.
The roads
Many of the roads in Uganda at the current situation are in perfect conditions. Most of the main roads heading upcountry are well paved and easily accessed. However the roads that branch off to main attractions are gravy and a little bumpy but absolutely passable. However others are being constructed to meet the requirements of road safety. Driving on the tarmac roads is 80km/hr as maximum speed and 50km/hr as minimum speed in towns and centres. A lot of traffic policemen are stationed on these roads with speed guns pointing at every car that comes their sight. So if you maintain averagely 50km/hr on your self drive car hire, you got a the first step to your self drive in Uganda a success. These traffic policemen/women are sometimes annoying. You really need to handle them so you go past them.
Driving in Kampala
Kampala is the capital city of Uganda and being a capital city of developing country, you will always expect a night mare of traffic in the rush hours. Drivers in Kampala are used to the bump-to-bump drive, only the clever survive. The normal basics of driving cars that you learn in driving schools do not apply here in Uganda Kampala drive. You need to apply friendly gesture to have way ahead. Kampala being a small city with many cars, infrastructure is over used calling for potholes in the city. You will bump into a pothole unnoticed. Traffic lights at some points do not work and drivers will not follow them unless there are traffic policemen. It rilly gets messy in the evenings where everyone is rushing home. You really need patience in you if you decide on a self drive car hire in Uganda
Self drive cars and the rental agencies
Different car rental agencies in Uganda offer different cars for self drive. Some other companies restrict on the kind of vehicle they give for a self drive in Uganda. The most common vehicle most companies will offer you for the self drive car hire in Uganda is the SUV Rav4 a full time 4wheel that is perfect for a max of 4 persons with enough luggage space. The Prado land cruisers are also a common offer for self drive car rental in Uganda but a little expensive than the Suv Rav4s. Other vehicles are also available for hire and given out for self drive but are more sophisticated vehicles that are always given out with drivers. With these cars like the safari land cruisers, its more than just start-engage gear-accelerate and direct. Its more than just you behind the wheels reason most car rental agencies in Uganda will provide these cars with drivers and in any cases with breakdown, the drivers always have an immediate solutions.
Insurance
Insurance in Uganda is not mandatory, but insurance in car rental is a must. Many of the car rental agencies in Uganda comprehensively insure their vehicles inclusive of third party. Always make sure you ask about the insurance policy or read the policies on the websites under the terms and conditions page. However the car rental comprehensive insurance does not cover the medical, injuries inflicted on the parties or on you fall under medical insurance from your own company. Please make sure you have medical insurance just before you make up your mind on traveling to Uganda on a self drive car hire in Uganda.
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The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its eflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep scars.
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The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its eflection on the tropic.
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The shack was made of the tough budshields of the royal palm which are called guano and in it there was a bed, a table, one chair, and a place on the dirt floor to cook with charcoal. On the brown walls of the flattened, overlapping leaves of the sturdy fibered guano there was a picture.
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The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its eflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks.
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They walked up the road together to the old man’s shack and went in through its open door. The old man leaned the mast with its wrapped sail against the wall and the boy put the box and the other gear beside it. The mast was nearly as long as the one room of the shack.
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No one would steal from the old man but it was better to take the sail and the heavy lines home as the dew was bad for them and, though he was quite sure no local people.
Read MoreAkampene Punishment Island – Kabale
Picture this; you are a young girl expecting your first child conceived out of wedlock. You are woken up in the middle of the night, tied up and carried by the strongest men in the village.
You have no idea where you are being taken and to add to your confusion you get on a boat, disembark on an island, given just a pole for your own defense, and left to your means. Oh, and lest we forget, you have no phone because this was way back before technological advancement. One would hope that a smitten boyfriend would follow and rescue his girl but the circumstances were different. At that time, the no-nonsense Bakiga would also shove pregnant girls off a cliff. Therefore, if your sweetheart disappeared in the night, you would have no idea whether she had been drowned or abandoned on this small island, tied to a tree, and left to die of hunger.
The punishment was meant to show the gravity of engaging in premarital sex. However, some girls would be saved by men who had no cows to pay the bride price who would literally go fishing for women on the island. In the first half of the 20th century, the practice got abandoned but it is still possible to find women who were picked up from Punishment Island today living with the men who rescued them. According to Steven Tiwangye, 50, a tour guide at Lake Bunyonyi, the men who would rescue the girls and marry them would also be banished from their homes. “If a man married a girl from Akampene, he would never return to his parents’ home. It was a taboo to marry a ‘fallen’ girl,” Tiwangye explains. In his documentary, ‘The Bakiga – How We Throw Away Our African Culture,’ Festo Karwemera, an elder in Kigezi and an activist for the promotion of the Bakiga culture talks about the Akampene tradition with remorse. Much as the practice was barbaric and inhuman, it served its purpose and it was a good day when the Bakiga decided to abandon it.
Born in 1925, Karwemera lived through the time the tradition was being practiced and says that the Bakiga were not necessarily murderous but had a strong sense of morality and tradition. Being but had a strong sense of morality and tradition. Being no-nonsense people, naturally, the elders expected everyone to heed the customs and traditions and whoever failed to do so, was expected to pay for it. Akempene Island is one of the 29 islands dotting Lake Bunyonyi the scenic crater Lake located in the highlands of South Western Uganda, in Bufuka village. Due to the vagaries of nature, the island keeps getting reclaimed by the lake, and most of its land is already submerged by the water making it one of the tiniest islands on the lake. There are motorboats and local canoes that take tourists from the mainland to the island.
Today, the terror of the past has been buried and forgotten and the island turned into a peaceful and tranquil place for the discerning tourist in search of rest a communion with nature. You can have a family picnic or enjoy a swim in bilharzia-free clear water. An overnight experience in this beautiful setting is nothing but memorable. Just like the rest of the area, the island boasts of a rich birdlife for the bird lover. Enjoy the rich everyday life and culture of the Batwa, and the Bakiga who make the largest numbers in the area. A walk on the island is no ordinary walk because of the birds mixed with the sound of waves and the cool fresh breeze a no-nonsense people, naturally, the elders expected everyone to heed the customs and traditions and whoever failed to do so, was expected to pay for it.
Akempene Island is one of the 29 islands dotting Lake Bunyonyi the scenic crater Lake located in the highlands of South Western Uganda, in Bufuka village. Due to the vagaries of nature, the island keeps getting reclaimed by the lake, and most of its land is already submerged by the water making it one of the tiniest islands on the lake. There are motorboats and local canoes that take tourists from the mainland to the island. Today, the terror of the past has been buried and forgotten and the island turned into a peaceful and tranquil place for the discerning tourist in search of rest and communion with nature. You can have a family picnic or enjoy a swim in bilharzia-free clear water. An overnight experience in this beautiful setting is nothing but memorable. Just like the rest of the area, the island boasts of a rich birdlife for the bird lover. Enjoy the rich everyday life and culture of the Batwa, and the Bakiga who make the largest numbers in the area.
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The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh.
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The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh.
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