The 30-hour bus ride between Dar Es Salaam and Kampala was an odyssey. The bus left Dar in the wee hours (6:00am) from the craziest bus station ever. It was basically a huge parking lot arranged in a U around a central divider of plants and shotgun shacks. Dozens of giant coaches were parked at weird angles to each other and often blocking the flow of taxi, dala-dalas and motorbikes ferrying passengers into the areas. The standard developing world practice of substituting the horn for the brakes meant a lot of noise and swerving from vehicles of various sizes. The buses themselves didn’t tend to stay parked either. Before departing drivers tended to make a circuit or two of the U honking and yelling out the destination to try to pick up a last few passengers.
The only lighting came from headlights (used only sporadically) and the various stalls selling drinks, food and cell phone top up cards, most of which were painted in the colors of their corporate sponsors (red for Coca-cola, magenta for Zain telecom seemed to dominate) casting the whole place in a kind of hellish hue. And swarming everywhere were bus touts yelling out company names and destinations which both added to and served to navigate the general chaos since there were no signs or other indications of where to find anything. My taxi driver gave up on trying to find my bus and handed me off to a porter/tout who took off at high speeds through the crowd with my backpack. I had all expensive stuff and money in a daypack, but at this point, I would gladly trade my laptop and hard currency for my spare pair of pants (yes I am down to two pair), so I took off at high speeds after him. Apparently petty theft was not on the agenda, because I found him at my bus waiting with my bag. Despite the relatively obvious logic that I might want to stay within visual range of my possessions, I think he equated speed of bag delivery with size of tip because 1000 shillings was not particularly satisfactory. True, it’s only about 50 cents, but everyone else was tipping with coins that come in much smaller denominations, so I figured any paper money would cover the standard tourist inflation.
The bus was only about half filled, so I got a two seat row to myself. It was enough space to somewhat stretch out either my upper or lower body, so I spent the trip from Tanzania to Kenya in a serious of awkward contortions which had the added benefit of being an upper-body workout since the roads were mostly under construction and featured frequent diversions to temporary dirt tracks built in ditches alongside the tarmac. Approaching one of these diversions did not usually entail any reduction in speed from the driver, he would just suddenly jerk the wheel 45 degrees, plunging us down a steep incline to the track. He kept good control of the bus, but I ended up clinging for dear life to whatever I could to stay on the seat.
We crossed into Kenya after about 12 hours and the border was pretty straightforward since I already had my visa. I got stamped out of Tanzania at one shack and walked about 500 yards to another shack where I got stamped into Kenya. At the second shack I saw a bunch of tourists looking fresh and recently air-conditioned stepping out of a late model minibus with a hotel chain logo on the side. My “luxury” bus was a windows open sort of affair (both for cooling and ease of buying bottles of Fanta and skewers of roasted meats of unknown provenance at every roadside stop), which given the state of the roads meant that I was covered in dust of various African shades. The meat skewers were also relatively dusty, but apparently that did not deter most of my fellow passengers, who treated the trip as one big mobile barbecue feast. I checked the guidebook and apparently the private minibuses covered about half of the Dar-Nairobi route for only $25. Doh.
We made it into Nairobi at about 9pm, and my next bus left at 10:30, so I planned to stick close to the bus park mindful of Nairobi’s reputation for unchecked street crime. The one other young-ish tourist-ish girl on the bus asked me where I was headed and if I wanted to share a taxi. I told her Kampala by bus and she gave me a “you crazy, white girl” look (which in reality should be a “you crazy, very tan or just dusty girl” look). Apparently despite the convenient back-to-back scheduling of bus arrival and departure NO ONE does this route straight. Except me.
Included in my $60 bus ticket was a voucher for a meal at the bus park café, which advertised itself as “last chance for hot food that is SAFE.” Any restaurant that feels compelled to bill its safeness is probably anything but. Having already tempted fate with some roadside samosas someplace in northern Tanzania, I decided to give the free dinner a pass and gave my voucher to a bus station agent who helped me find my bus at 10pm and load my bag. He seemed shocked that I would turn down the offer of delicious mystery meat and chips but pocketed the voucher and told me to get on the bus sooner rather than later. I grabbed a box of oat biscuits from a vendor and got on. Good thing too, since the bus decided to leave at 10:10 to circle the city yelling out for other passengers. No takers, so I asked the conductor if I could have the whole 5-seat back row. He gave me the YC,WG look and motioned for me to go ahead. I unpacked my biscuits, water, a spare Snickers found at the bottom of my bag, and the sarong/bedsheet I had thought to grab out of my backpack and settled in for a night with both upper and lower body stretched out, planning to wake up at the Uganda border completely relaxed and rested. I had forgotten the laws of physics meant that the back of the bus would experience potholes and speed bumps with a greater degree of violence than the front. At least a dozen times during the ride, I felt my whole body get airborne. If I ever build Six Flags East Africa, Horizontal Bus Jolt will definitely be one of the rides. That said, I imagine the entire experience would have been much more unpleasant with a GI filled with bus station food.
The Uganda border was also easy, though this time accomplished in near total darkness and in a semi-conscious state. Not a problem for the passport stamping part, but considerably more challenging for the using the squat toilet part. The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful – unless you count epic traffic jams, potholes of legendary proportions and a few more rounds of window-side meat transactions.
I am flying back to Dar.
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