The Source of the Nile

For some reason, when I saw that there was a 25 km trail race in Jinja, Uganda, I decided it was a good idea to enter. No matter that I haven’t run more than about 10k in one go since moving here – I convinced myself that Kigali’s hills were a substitute for distance. And never mind the small issue of a 14 hour overnight bus journey to get there, followed by another one the same to get back after the race!

I couldn’t convince anyone else to actually come and run with me, but Josh, Amy, Luke and Stan did come along to Jinja to enjoy its most famous attraction – white water rafting on the Nile.

The race is named for the same river – the Source of the Nile Trail Race – and had four distances, 5km, 12km, 25km and 50km. I watched a small band of 50km runners set off at 7am, then went along to the race briefing for the 25km. They had flags for all of the runners’ nations which was a nice touch. I had been hoping I would be the only Brit and so manage to be first Brit in a race for the only time in my life, but sadly there was another British girl who turned out to be faster than me!

When we set off it was warm and humid, and I found myself hoping it would rain. Of course ten minutes later it did, rain so heavy that it was like running under a cold shower turned on full blast. The tracks promptly turned to mud which managed to be both sticky and slippery at the same time; sticky so that it clings to your shoes and triples their weight, and slippery so you can never tell which way your foot will slide when you put it down. These conditions combined to make running pretty impossible at times!

In the end I finished in 2:44 – not my proudest achievement, but I’m glad I did it.

 

Sabinyo

It’s been a busy week so it’s taken me a while to post this. Last weekend we crossed the border into Uganda to climb a volcano called Sabinyo. The name means “tooth” in Kinyarwanda and apparently it’s named because it looks like an old man’s jagged teeth. One of the major attractions is that the summit is on the border between Rwanda, Uganda and DRC, so once at the top you can be in three countries at once!

The summit is at 3,645 m with around 1,700 m of ascent. It took us around 9 hrs (up and down) and felt like a pretty full on day. I have to say that the photos below really don’t do justice to the amazing beauty of the scenery and the outrageousness of some of the situations the route goes through. If you come to East Africa and don’t climb this volcano, you’re missing out!

First sight of Sabinyo. The mountain has 5 peaks, and the route goes up the left hand side as seen here to the top of the first peak; drops down and up again to the second; and finally up to the third and highest peak before retracing the route back down.

The route climbs briefly through bamboo forest before passing into this amazing afro-montane forest where all the trees are hung with moss.

The view across to Gahinga, which we climbed a few weeks ago, and behind it Murabura.

On top of the first summit; and looking across to the second peak. The climb up to this point felt pretty hard work and I wasn’t looking forward to losing height only to regain it again!

 

Much of the route consisted of ladders built from small branches, attached to the mountain by some undefined method. I tried to turn off my engineering brain and not think about the physics – which turned out to be surprisingly easy while surrounded by such stunning scenery.

 

Summit photo!

Looking down into Rwanda… Uganda… and DRC (thanks for pointing it out James!)

Descending the ladders was even more fun than going up. Watching people in front just disappear over a precipice into the mist was slightly disconcerting…