Entebbe to Kampala

At first there’s nothing remarkable about the road. It’s two-lanes. Light traffic. Little cottages and bungalows in amongst lush-ish vegetation lining the route. A guy on a motorcycle with smiley pillion races us for a bit. We overtake and leave him for dust. Then we’re stuck at the rear of a little open-backed van piled with pineapples, a boy sitting on the tailgate grinning a big grin at our driver as we look for our chance to get past.

And then it happens. Africa. The one I remember from Morocco. Suddenly a little town. A ribbon of tumbledown shops, and motorbikes parked at corners, and twenty sofas set out for sale, and then twenty chairs, groups of men and boys stood around, twenty, thirty of them.

People crossing the road on suicide missions between the speeding traffic. Mini-buses by the dozen pulling out and weaving around the bosa bosa taxi-bikes. Them weaving too.

Walkers along the 40 kilometres of route. Cyclists. Parties of school-kids in yellow and brown uniforms, even though it's August and they're on holiday, I'm presuming.. Many people well turned out. White shirts and ties. Christian missions. Nursery schools. Doctors clinics. All higgledy-piggledy.

Sometimes 'supermarkets' and sometimes little huts on stilts selling a few eggs, milk or fruit. A million Coca-Cola signs hand-painted all over the front of a building.

Traffic jams soon. Diesel air you could cut with a knife. White-uniformed, white- helmeted motorcycle police and then five- and six-strong pick-up trucks full of military type police in blue camouflage uniforms. We follow one as it swerves through the traffic trailing a line of us in its wake until even it is brought to a halt on the outskirts of Kampala....

We skirt the town. But the scene grows more and more biblical. One track up a hill chocabloc with vehicles, little shops on either side and hundreds, thousands of people moving from left to right across our path. A mile or two this lasts, our taxi crawling round potholes behind a truck with Chinese marking on its side as it finally turns off and allows us the open road. Open track, rather.

And then the houses - up this track - suddenly grow rather smart again. Walls and gardens and trees.

We wind up a hill. And soon we are at our hotel.