Run to the hills!

After almost two weeks of heavy work and new exiting experiences that brought plenty of joy and sometimes even sadness and feelings of powerlessness, we decided to leave Bubulo and finalize our work in Uganda with a grand hike on Mount Elgon. Mt Elgon is Ugandas largest mountain, 4400m, and holds one of the worlds biggest volcanic craters, 80km long and 50km wide.

The six of us started off from a small town called Budadiri in the morning, 1500 meters above sea level, and started our jouney to the top. Our minds were set on a "nice walk in the woods" to cool off from the hectic week and get a chance to experience Ugandian nature.Quite soon this changed. Our guide George brought his mandatory AK-47 and two carriers and led the way up through tight terrain and muddy slopes.

All of us feeling very fit and exited gave all it all and held a good tempo up until lunch. We managed to reach 2500m at that time and stopped to eat pasta and drink water. I had noticed that my pulse was beating on max bpm all the time and more and more frequently we needed to stop for small mini-pauses to catch our breath. The high altitude was becoming more and more noticeable to us and we felt weaker for every hour. Still, our carriers ran before us with many kgs of packing on their heads and did not show a sign of exhaustion.

After lunch we had another 6km climb to reach base camp on 3500m. Afterwards this part has been discussed among us as the most difficult part, partly because of the heavy lunch, but also due to the lack of oxygen and many hours of tough climbing.

As we went along the scenery changed and the vegetation varied from fields at the foot of the mountain to rainforest then turning over to bamboo forest and later very aruptly over to highland vegetation with swamps and odd looking cactus-like trees. Somewhere at 3000m, out of nowhere, a ranger showed up with a guestbook that we needed to sign. You dont go anywhere in Uganda without signing the guestbook!

We reached 3500m just before dusk and we were ridiculously happy over our achievment. 8h of walking and a elevation difference of 2000m! This is one Kebnekajse done in one day, at 1500m higher altitude. Not bad?!

Our carriers prepared out dinner over an open fire and with just 2 kettles they managed to serve us an excellent supé. We fell asleep 21.00 that day.

The next day we decided not to go for the summit (4400m) due to lack of time. This extra climb would take us another day and we needed to back in Budadiri today. Instead we took off and went for a 2h walk to reach a small but beautiful waterfall and then later climb all the way down to the foot of the mountain again.