UGANDA 2025: DOHA TO ENTEBBE TO NKIMA FOREST LODGE

 July 18, 2025

On arrival at the Entebbe Airport, we knew immediately we were not in Qatar anymore. We walked down stairs to exit our large jet.

Ella took her first steps on the African continent. (Qatar is considered West Asia.)

Instead of being met by a large golden teddy bear, we were greeted by a gorilla.

The airport bathroom met us giggle . . . 

. . . as did the sign over the baggage claim area:

We were picked up by Ema (short for Emmanuel), a guide who would help us several times during the next few days, and hustled out to a waiting vehicle:

We learned from competing Coke and Pepsi billboards that Uganda's nickname is "The Pearl of Africa." I've since learned that Winston Churchill coined the nickname when he went on safari to Uganda. He wrote in his 1908 book My African Journey: "For magnificence, for variety of form and colour, for profusion of brilliant life--bird, insect, reptile, beat--for vast scale--Uganda is truly 'the Pearl of Africa'."

Ema to us to a dock on Lake Victoria, where we loaded our suitcases and packs onto a long canoe-shaped boat with a motor. 

Lake Victoria has a surface area of over 23,000 square miles, making it Africa's largest lake by area and the world's second-largest freshwater lake by surface area after Lake Superior. It is bordered by three countries: Tanzania (49% of the shoreline), Uganda (45%), and Kenya (6%). As Uganda is a land-locked country, access to the lake's fishing industry is an important part of their economy.

It took about 30 minutes to cross a little finger of the lake, at which point we were picked up by Johnson, another wonderful Ugandan, and he drove us the final hour to Nkima Forest Lodge, where we were welcomed at the lodge with a glass of passion fruit juice.

After we got checked in, we were escorted by two porters to our cabin.

We had two side-by-side rooms . . . 

. . . and a large deck that looked out over the dense forest.

Nothing to complain about here!

One of the birds we were hoping to see was the shoebill, and we got an idea of what one looks like by looking at this fellow:

Dinner included fried plantains with a spicy sauce, fried beef, and roasted vegetables.

Before turning in, we smashed a cockroach and moved two caterpillars outside, but hey, we were in the jungle! We would have been disappointed if it had been too sterile!

We turned in early, hoping to finally get a full night's sleep before our adventure began in earnest in the morning.