When Humphrey of Geco Expeditions contacted us five months ago for guidance on some of the options and ideas they needed to fine-tune their itinerary to Uganda, I didn’t think it would be more than the usual trips they have done before through Uganda.

Geco Expeditions are a team of adventure enthusiasts with an interest in adventure and discovery in the wild places of Africa. Based in Kenya, they organise trips around the home country but also to different African countries. Whether it is a cultural tour, walking safari, mountain climbing, horse riding, 4×4 offroading trip, gorilla trekking, fly camping, birding, canoeing or just a chilled drive around the continent, they are happy to be part of it.

And just like the Land Rover Uganda Club, they develop resources and ensure the protection of Africa’s wildlife heritage through these adventures.

This flexible extraordinary trip would take them from Kenya, cross through Uganda and visit many places including some of the National Parks and head west and southwest of Uganda where they would enter Rwanda through the Chanika border, spend a few days adventuring in Rwanda then head briefly through parts of Northern Tanzania and weave through back to Kenya.

And they were here on the weekend of 5th August 2022. We met up in Jinja and we headed off to Nile River Explorers for the night. This was their first day of the trip having left Nairobi at 4 am in the morning, the same day. Overland trips will always have a few hiccups e.g. border crossing paperwork, car mechanical issues or something you have never thought of but on this day, most of this had gone according to plan, except for the occasional traffic police stops and checks.

We got to meet another bunch of awesome guys from the Chartwell South Africa to Chartwell UK Expedition that was driving all the way from South Africa to the United Kingdom in a convoy of 7 Heritage Series Land Rovers and is expected to travel through 20 countries over the next three months in a first-of-its-kind adventure!

At the Nile River Explorers Camp, the mood was upbeat, with several adventure stories and lots of catch-up memories from previous trips when some members of the Geco Expeditions team were last here. After one-two-three whiskeys, Matthew, a.k.a. the Chief Whiskey organiser of the team told me a story of when they camped, on one of their past trips, by a river bed, that they had apparently done extensive surveys and pre-approval checks before setting up camp, but on one of the nights, woke up to a flooded river that was just flowing through their tents and shaking up the cars, because of the gushing water, for those who were using roof top tents. Matthew thought it was a dream but later on, woke up to reality when he saw one of his storage plastic boxes mimicking a boat floating on the river. Luckily, the team managed to get everything together and evacuated to another location.

I couldn’t help but tell them some of many of my adventure stories as the night chill bit us by the Nile River but got us into more stories and bursting into raucous laughter. I think the whiskey catalysed the laughter as well. Nevertheless, we were happy and in the company of one of our team members who was dead asleep in a camp chair. We, later on, shook him up and told him to enter his comfy rooftop tent bed, a gesture he thought was very kind.

I decided to tell them a story on one of such trips. One bleary-eyed morning, with caffeine still missing from my system, I fumbled my way along the dusty path to my friend’s tent to wake him up so we go on an early game drive, calling out, “Good morning!” in a cheery voice as the hour would allow. It was barely 5 o’clock and the horizon was just starting to clear up. I heard a rhythmic thumping getting rapidly louder and I turned to find 700kgs of pissed-off cow bearing down on me. Clearly, it disagreed with my assessment of the morning.

I told them that as much as it would make me feel tough and proud to say that I stared it down or ashamed it with a withering punch, I didn’t. That doesn’t work with buffalo anyway. They are never kind enough to mock charge and will always finish any attack they start. If a buffalo is running at you, you have to climb something or throw yourself flat and hope that the buffalo will miss and carry on running.

All I wanted to emphasise in my story that ended up with me surviving the buffalo by jumping into a thornbush, was that as we continue on our expedition, we should have enormous respect for the buffalo when sighted or even its assumed presence near any of our campsites.

We don’t know how, but the man that had climbed into his tent into dreamland suddenly woke up and burst out laughing at the buffalo story. We just lost it and burst into laughter and decided to call it a day. The team needed to rest and get set for the journey to Kampala, the Capital of Uganda.

In Kampala, we avoided the chaos of the city and stayed in one of the suburbs that would provide an easy and clear exit for our next destination, Murchison Falls, the next day. We met at Velocity Bar and Grill, in Kyanja, one of the Land Rover Uganda Club homes where we hold events and members regularly meet.

A number of meaty ribs and beers went down in amounts we cannot talk about in public in case any of us has to address the nation and we have to listen attentively.

The journey continued on to Murchison Falls National Park the next day, with a visit to the top of the falls and stunning wildlife drives through the park. We chose one of the most beautiful campsites at the delta by the Albert Nile with Taban, our guide, during our stay in the park. We enjoyed our camping, the freshwater fish that we roasted for dinner that evening among lots of fun experiences in the park. Lake Albert delta is a significant area for safaris in Murchison falls national park because it is home to a lot of bird species and it is a target point for a lot of birders to do birding safaris in Murchison falls national park. For us, we were in the middle of all of it, sleeping off to the sounds of tinkling toads, then to the occasional distant hyaena laughter, then once in a while, we would hear a squealing and sometimes gargling like a goat that was having an unpleasant sexual encounter.

We sadly had to leave Murchison Falls and continue on further down to Western and South Western Uganda, passing through the very beautiful Albertine escarpment to Hoima then to the beautiful Rweteera Safari Park and then head to Bunyonyi Overland Resort where we hope to have a chilled day or two after these first action-packed days and have our final plan then head off to Rwanda. Matthew knows quite a bit about Rwanda. The rest of us don’t know much. Humphrey goes with the flow. All he needs is food and he is a happy man.

He is our team leader and has done well so far. We plan to get him a Ugandan girlfriend though as a surprise. The only problem is that he has no sense of imagination on what to do with her other than taking her to a Bush Camp with a setup that includes a teepee over a toilet and a clearing where a fire can be built and then he will just sit there with her as probably two of us sheepishly smile as we bring them their dinner by the fire. Firelight is romantic. It makes everyone look beautiful just as it did in Murchison Falls and Rweteera Safari Park. With lanterns lit, the place looks beautiful even though during the day it is just a patch of soil and Humphrey’s teepee is filled with spiders.

The Adventure continues… (to be continued)