18th – 19th – Sad endings with a twist

As mentioned previously this Uganda trip was part of a larger trip which meant that only 8 of us were leaving the group and returning to Kampala. The rest – including the truck – had a long drive to Nairobi ahead of them. This meant an early start with breakfast at 0600. The 8 of us decided to skip the truck breakfast and instead having breakfast in the bar when they opened at 0800 and then getting on buses back to Kampala around 0900.

Had the morning schedule started an hour later we would have completely missed the rain, but instead we woke up to rain just as relentless as last night. Everything was wet but not much you could do about that.

With the truck leaving before us we said our sad goodbyes before returning to the bar and waited and had breakfast. From there we got on our buses and drove back to Kampala and the camp site we had stayed at twice already. Relaxed for a bit before I and another had to start heading towards the airport. Kampala airport isn’t the most interesting airport I’ve been at but it helped being there with company and their café was acceptable.

Just before boarding we met a third from the group getting a later flight but it didn’t take long before we had to say our final goodbyes and leave. The flight was on time, the 7½ hour layover in Doha was long but planned (finding a silent room with loungers and getting a few hours of sleep was priceless) and arriving home all luggage made it with no fuss.

This was a fun trip. Out of the 9 days travelling very few of them was spent on actual wildlife watching, but looking back it didn’t really matter; it was a fun group full of amazing people so on the days where we were just driving or having down time you were still fully entertained (or you just spent your time sleeping which, let’s be honest, was a pretty popular activity). Big thanks to Ellen, Mike, Nicole, Aurélie, Silja, Victoria, Paige, Daniel, Joel, Tanja, Laura, Katy, Alex, Lisa, Lauren, Hannah, Kyle, Jamie, Daniel, Dan and Dongmin and our guide and driver Caroline and Anto for making this trip as memorable as it has become. I miss you all already and hope I get to meet you all again some time!

Group photo in the truck.

“But Jakob! What about the twist?” I hear you say (or maybe it’s just the voices again). Ah, yes.

When boarding in Doha on the last leg of the flight home the attendant scanned my boarding card and… got an error. She tried again and got another error. Starting typing in the system, scanned again, typed some more, scanned again but still got an error. She called over a colleague/supervisor and they did some more typing and grumbling until they printed out a new boarding card. When flying my priority is to get an aisle seat so that I am able to stretch my legs so I was a bit protective of my H seat. So when I got the new boarding card my line of thought was pretty much “E? Motherf… They removed me from my aisle se… Row 6? What the…. Why does it say Business ClOooooooh….”. Yeah. I just got upgraded to Business Class without doing anything at all. Unfortunately the flight was only 6 hours so it was limited how long I got to enjoy it. But the enjoyment was real. While still at the gate I was given an a la carte menu from which I was able to order whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. And I went against my principles and starting photographing my food. With my phone. Apologies for the quality (or lack thereof).

I am tempted to do something silly like framing this ticket.

The legroom! Look at the legroom!

I estimate the monitor was 15"-17".

Yup. That's a tablecloth. An equally fancy cloth napkin was nicely put in your lap before the food arrived. The bread bowl contains a bun, muffin and croissant. Next to it is a strawberry jam and I had 4 options - 3 jams and honey.

The orange juice seen to the right was freshly pressed. Not something from a box, but freshly pressed. I regret I only had one glass.

Breakfast starter; smoked ham and beef with feta, olives and dried tomatos.

Breakfast main course; potatoes, scrambled eggs, beef filet with mushroom sauce and cherry tomatoes.

I was presented with a plate of various condiments, took the ketchup and tabasco but there were also at least 2 different kinds of mustard.

When looking at the menu I assumed it was a couple of strips of a filet, but no, it was a chunk of meat. Might not have been as tender as I could have hope but it was delicious!

Breakfast dessert; cheese with crackers, plum chutney and a small assortment of nuts and dried fruit. And a glass of port. Because.

1½ hours before arrival I was asked if I wanted anything before we landed. Sigh - ok.

Lunch main course; linguine with beef, tomato sauce, mini tomatoes and cream cheese.

Lunch dessert; a chocolate cake and lemon pie. In the dark background (lights were out in the cabin so I only had my personal light) a second glass of port is hiding. 

2 glasses of port before noon. No shame. It was delicious.

What a great end to a trip. I could definitely get used to this.

Full album can be found here.