Travel and vacations - Advise needed: independent travel Uganda

On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 08:13:49 +0100, Marc wrote:

We are planning a trip to Uganda august 2004 or January 2005
Who has first hand experience with independent travel?
Such as; is independent travel possible, car hire, camping, do's & don'ts

I did it in the month of January a few years ago. I went to Fort Portal to
see the monkeys in the forest and I heartily recommend that trip : walking
in the forest to close in with groups of chimpanzees and other various
types of monkeys was a fascinating experience. Apart from that I spent
a couple of weeks in Arua to visit a friend, but there is nothing special
to see there as a tourist apart from a nice little Ugandan town and plenty
of NGOs.

Bus links to anywhere are reliable and convenient, people are incredibly
friendly and security is very good. Friendliness and security will
especially astonish you if you happen to come from Nairobi. As you
probably know since you want to go there, Uganda is a lovely country. I
had nothing but good surprises.

Cheap accommodation is generally available. In Kampala I slept at the YWCA
on the floor of a classroom. This is as cheap as it gets if you want to
crash downtown Kampala unless you mind clearing the place in the morning
before the students come. In Fort Portal there was a very nice camping
place on the road to the monkeys reserve, but camping is usually not an
option unless you are far from a city. But that is not a major problem
since simple accommodation is relatively cheap, in stark contrast to
Rwanda and Burundi where I was horrified by the prices of even the
scruffiest hotels.