Travel to Uganda – Episode 348
categories: africa travel
Travel to Uganda as the Amateur Traveler talks to Christian Cummins about his bicycle trip across Uganda. Christian is a British expat who lives in Austria where he works for radio station FM4.
He had recently returned from the African state of Uganda where he was raising money for a children’s education charity called Link Community Development.
“What amazed me about Uganda is I think 50% of the population is under the age of 15 so there are just lots and lots of kids. And even if every university graduate decided to go into primary education there would still be a lot of kids per school teachers. One of the schools I visited, actually a very good school, and there were 800 kids and 15 teachers.”
About biking around the country Christian says “It was a great way to see a country you see it in the news for always negative reasons and then to go and discover it for how it really is, as a tourist at least.”
“When I was in Uganda I did a lot of touristy things, we went to some of the most well-known towns and went to some of the national parks. We went to the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary. We went up to the Murchison Falls National Park which fans of Hemingway will know is the area where he had two plane crashes in a week. We even stayed in the Hemingway hotel.
right click here to download (mp3)
right click here to download (iTunes version with pictures)
Show Notes
Link Community Development Charity
Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary
Murchison Falls National Park
Operation Entebbe
Conflict In the Ivory Coast
Africa: A New Frontier – The Rush for Oil and Gas
Masindi Hotel
Hemingway’s Plane Crash
Paraa Safari Lodge
Uganda Bike Ride with Chris Cummins
Christian Cummins’ Book: A West African Summer (audio)
Christian Cummins’ Book: A West African Summer (paper)
Christian Cummins’ Book: A West African Summer (ebook)
News
Family of teen stowaway who fell from plane’s wheel suing airport, city, US Airways
Passengers ‘banned from flights for carrying sweaters’
South Africa holds diamond smuggler who swallowed 220 gems
Travel to Uganda – Episode 843
Volunteer Travel in Uganda – Episode 360
Mountain Gorillas in Uganda and Rwanda – Episode 80
Travel to Rwanda – Episode 591
by Chris Christensen
Chris Christensen is the creator of the Amateur Traveler blog and podcast. He has been a travel creator since 2005 and has won awards including being named the "Best Independent Travel Journalist" by Travel+Leisure Magazine.+Chris Christensen | @chris2x | facebook
6 Responses to “Travel to Uganda – Episode 348”
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Tags: audio travel podcast, bicycle travel, podcast, uganda
_brendan_
Says:November 18th, 2012 at 8:38 pm
Loved the episode. Reminded me of when my wife & I spent our honeymoon in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania last year. If people are interested in cycle tours, we can strongly recommend the cycle tour we did in Tanzania & Kenya from escapeadventures.co.nz.
davidnjoku
Says:November 19th, 2012 at 3:44 am
I really loved listening to this episode. I’ve never thought of going to Uganda before, but now I really want to go. Your guest’s obvious enthusiasm and affection for the country was really heartwarming. All too often (even on your excellent podcast, unfortunately) we get Westerners who look down on the countries they’re visiting or make overly-obvious shows of NOT looking down on them so we can admire their “open-mindedness”. Not this time. So well done to him, and well done to you too, Chris for a great podcast (of course, I’m biased since I did your Nigeria episode!)
Chris Christensen
Says:November 19th, 2012 at 10:44 am
Glad you liked it.
ambiverbal
Says:November 24th, 2012 at 6:14 am
I’m disturbed that you would promote tourism to Uganda when it is poised to institute the most Draconian laws against homosexuals on the planet. Not only would gay people be subject to the death penalty, but those who simply do not report gay people or even rent them an apartment will be subject to imprisonment. Western governments are prepared to cut aid funding if this law goes into effect.
Reports are pervasive on this matter, but a summary can be found here: http://www.opednews.com/populum/pagem.php?f=If-Ugandans-Get-Their-Chri-by-Rev-Dan-Vojir-121121-527.html
christiancummins
Says:November 29th, 2012 at 12:38 am
@ambiverbal Hi this is Christian – the guest on the podcast. I appreciate you raising this very important issue. Let me give you the honest answer – I related my personal experiences of a short bike ride across Uganda. Politics was rarely an issue, the subject did not come up during out ride, and I think shunning a country because of a ludicrous law that its political elite has dreamed up would be counterproductive. We need more exchange not less –
– but this is what I wrote at the end to the trip in an on-line diary published on the home page of my radio station (I also raised it on air)
http://fm4.orf.at/stories/1708432/“
“On a short trip across the country, you can only skirt through and describe what you experience. This diary has just been a record of my own adventures in Uganda. There are interesting important stories I have wholly ignored.There`s the corruption that economists have told me has a corrosive effect on Uganda`s economy. And there are the new challenges posed by the discovery of reserves of oil, that often cursed “black gold”. We passed through a community in Bulisa on Lake Albert where the children had distended bellies from malnutrition and where the oil men have arrived speeding through in fast white 4×4`s. The oil companies are funding development projects and had put money into the school we visited. But will their influence be benign?
People have asked me to raise the issue of the politically-blessed homophobia in Uganda. This week Uganda`s political class shamed itself in the eyes of the world with the so called Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which although the shorn of the death penalty at the last minute, is sad example of intolerance. The US President has called the law “odious” – there’s not much I can add to that.“
Jac que
Says:August 24th, 2016 at 8:15 am
Posted five years ago but still the same Uganda, beautiful and welcoming. I enjoyed listening in and we do speak Kiswahili but people in central Uganda would rather not use Kiswahili that much but its a beautiful languague. Karibu tena