Matt and Denis eating red caviar



Lenin and Stalin busts in the Moscow sculpture park



St Basils Cathedral


Cathedral-on-the-Blood, site of the assasination

Soviet military might

Swimming with Alex and his friends

The Beatles in Yekaterinburg

He's bad!!

Russia 2nd – 19th July

I only spent just over 2 weeks in Russia, not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because it was so expensive. I flew back to London from Entebbe on 1st July and spent a hectic 20 hours in London before flying out to Moscow.

Moscow is a beautiful city that appeared to be full of rich men in expensive cars and lots of attractive women. The Kremlin was large and spectacular and Red Square is a lot smaller than I was expecting. On the edge of Red Square is the stunning St Basil’s Cathedral. When inside, it is like a maze and while I was there I was fortunate that the choir were performing. Their singing was amazing and this was increased by the fabulous acoustics.

Situated in the centre of Red Square is Lenin’s mausoleum, I got up early one morning to avoid the queues and also because it shuts at 12pm. The rest of the day is used by to treat and preserve the body. It was a strange sight to walk into the mausoleum to look at what looked like a waxwork of Lenin laid in a glass case. Unfortunately no photos were allowed and I’d already been pre-warned about the guards standing in the shadows ready to jump out and arrest you if you tried. I decided in the end not to risk a visit to a Russian jail.

What surprised me the most about Russia was how friendly Russians are. While I was in Moscow, I met a guy called Denis. He was a musician in a band who had appeared on Russian TV (see link below) and although he didn’t speak English that well, he spent time showing Matt (An Ozzy traveler I met) and me around the city.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeFeHlNzmZ0

Language was definitely a problem in Moscow, you see very few signs in anything other than Russian Cyrillic and very few people in the shops and restaurants spoke anything other than Russian. When I decided to go to the train station to book my train ticket, I took a note written by the hostel staff in Russian. I stood in the queue for 30 minutes worriedly listening to the angry exchanges between customers and ticket attendants where they could both speak the same language and wondered what there reaction would be an English guy speaking no Russian apart from Spasiba (thank you) and Niet (no). When it came to my turn I handed over my note, money and passport, and was asked various questions in Russian, to which I could just shrug and smile. Soon the attendant was laughing at the situation, the customers in the queue behind were laughing and I was laughing. I walked out 10 minutes later with my ticket and had managed not to provoke any angry reactions from anyone. The next day I sensibly turned up with Denis to buy my second ticket, this time while we were in the queue it looked like 2 old ladies were on the verge of a fight to the death, looking at them I wouldn’t have wanted to cross either of them.

Eating and drinking out in Moscow was extremely expensive, on one of the few occasions I ate out, a few of us went to a Japanese restaurant and ordered a “Japanese Pizza” which cost around 6 pounds. When the pizza arrived we all couldn’t help burst out laughing, the pizza was so small and thin, it was barely a mouthful, the base of the pizza was actually one of the pancakes that you get with crispy duck to make your wraps in a Chinese restaurant.

Denis did manage to show me a few cheap places to eat in Moscow, small places serving soup or kebabs for about 1 or 2 pounds. Most of the time I had to buy food and cheap vodka from the supermarket, including red and a cheap black caviar (not beluga) which surprisingly I liked. It went well with the Russian dark bread washed down with vodka from the freezer.

After a week in Moscow I set out on the Trans Siberian railway for the 2 day trip to Yekaterinburg, the final destination of the train being Vladivostok. The scenery didn’t really change that often, it was basically forest all the way. Very few people on the train spoke English, in my cabin there was a professor from Moscow University, his wife and another lady who spoke a little English, but nobody else in the carriage spoke English. Even though communication was difficult, the Russians were very welcoming. We would communicate as best we could while sharing food and vodka, a couple who spoke no English invited me to visit their home in Vladivostok, and unfortunately I had to explain that I already had train tickets booked to Ulan Bator.

When I got off the train in Yekaterinburg I wasn’t really sure what to expect. The only thing that I new before arriving was that it was the location where in the 1917 revolution the Russian royal family had been assassinated.

I set off walking around the city in order to find some cheap accommodation. I tried 2 hostels, 1 which I couldn’t find and the other there was no answer at the door, I then tried couch surf without success, so for my first night I had to book into a 40 pounds a night hotel. I was extremely worried as I knew I had to spend the week in Yekaterinburg before my next train and couldn’t afford to spend them all at this hotel. The next morning I set off towards the final hostel in Yekaterinburg with everything crossed passing a communist rally by the statue of Lenin (of about 5 or 6 people) and rang the buzzer on what appeared to be an apartment block. An American guy answered the door and I asked him if there were any rooms available, when he said yes, I was so relieved.

The American guy actually turned out not to be American at all, his name was Alex and he was actually a native of Yekaterinburg. He’d lived in the States for a couple of years, hence the accent, was managing the hostel as well as performing in a band called One Glimpse Away (see link below). They had just finished making their first music video and were planning a tour of Eastern Europe and Scandinavia.

http://www.myspace.com/oneglimpseaway

Yekaterinburg didn’t really provide a huge amount to see and do, I saw most of it on an impromptu tour given by a Russian army veteran who spoke no English. I met him while I was sat in the park and after he discovered I was from England, he said his one word of English he know, “Beatles” and beckoned me to follow him. First he showed me a stone computer keyboard, followed by a Beatles’ Monument and a Michael Jackson Memorial, several statues including one of Lenin, the Yellow Submarine bar, tanks and rocket launchers outside the military museum and finally the Afghanistan Memorial which showed all the soldiers from Yekaterinburg that had died in that war as well as many other wars. Up until the 90s it appeared that the USSR had been in at least 1 or 2 wars a year.

The one remaining place to visit was the Cathedral-on-the-Blood, a Russian Orthodox church which had been built on the exact spot the Ipatiev house had once stood. The Ipatiev house being the site of Nikolai Romanov and his families assassination. The building in which they had been assassinated in had been demolished by the Soviets to stop it from becoming a pilgrimage spot for royalists. Subsequently the church was built and now there is also a memorial including some photographs of the Tsar and his family.

Due to limited finances I did very little else in Yekaterinburg. There were a few attractions that I would have liked to have seen including a Russian Mafia graveyard (Yekaterinburg was once the HQ of the Russian mafia) and the Europe Asia Border (Yekaterinburg is just inside Asia). Most of my remaining time I spent drinking cheap vodka, playing poker and swimming in the lake with Alex and his friends.

Final Thoughts on Uganda

In my 3 months I saw pretty much every area of the country. The bustling capital of Kampala, Jinja where Speke found the source of the Nile, Mbarara (The doctor works here in “The Last King of Scotland”, Queen Elizabeth and Murchison Falls National Parks, Kabale and the beautiful Lake Buyoni as well as my home for 3 months Uganda Lodge in the village of Ruhanga between the towns of Itojo and Ntungamo.

I also met some wonderful people, with who I hope to stay in contact with and visit again.

Denis was the owner of the Uganda Lodge Project. Several years before, he had met Ann and discussed with her how he wanted to do something to help the community where he lived. He had some land in the area and together they discussed how to use it to increase the amount of Mazungus visiting the area and therefore the amount of money coming into the community.

After this discussion they set to work, first came the Lodge, allowing people somewhere to stay in the area, then came the school which was developing fast while I was there and then future projects including water supply to the homes in the village and mosquito net distribution for the district.

Zake was the first person I met when he picked me up from Entebbe airport. He always made me feel welcome whenever I visited Kampala, a true Rasta man with peace and love for the world. He also had land that he was looking to develop into shops, houses and also a farm that he was looking to develop for tourism.

Sharp was somebody that everyone liked immediately due to his permanent smile, relaxed attitude and great sense of humour. It was strange then when he described his days as a soldier, fighting in the Congo to help remove Miton Obote, who was president both before and after Idi Amin.

My best friend had to be Alex. When I first met him, he didn’t speak much English, he was 19 years old and wanted to make enough money from making bricks to be able to fund a mechanics course, eventually with the hope of owning his own garage. During his 19 years, he had never been any further than the next few towns, but when talking to him about traveling, you got the impression that he had a desire to see more of the world. When I next visit Uganda I hope that I can at least take him to see Kampala and hopefully at some point he has the opportunity to visit the UK and will always be welcome in my home.

Some of my saddest memories included the young children begging in Kampala, holding out their hand’s crying “Love me! Love Me!”, hearing of children dying of malaria, parents with HIV or being killed in road traffic accidents on the main road. There were several road traffic accidents which happened close to the Lodge while I was there.

I had many highlights which included Martyrs Day, this is a day to commemorate the slaughter of Catholics by the Bugandan King on 3^rd June 1886. Catholics from all over Uganda walk from wherever there homes to the martyrs hill in Kampala where there are days of religious ceremonies, dancing and music. Some set off weeks in advance because they have to walk the whole way, no matter which part of Uganda they come from. People now visit from all over the world and the current Bugandan King and the President also pay there respects by visiting. After Martyrs Day I was presented by one of Zake’s cousins with a Bugandan Royal robe.

Another was my birthday spent with 6 beautiful young ladies Helen, Catherine, Alison, Melanie, Alice and Kelly at the stunning Lake Bunyoni. Lake Bunyoni is the only lake in Uganda that you can swim in as it does not contain any parasities. As well as swimming we went canoeing on the lake which was actually more difficult than a little boy in a boat had made it look. Alison and me managed to perfect our stroke so that we were not always spinning in circles and eventually managed to reach a paradise like island in the middle where we recovered over a relaxing drink before setting back.

Also on both of my safaris there were many highlights. These included seeing Obama the young rhino, named because of his Kenyan father and American mother. The parents were donated from Disneyland and Kenya to help reintroduce rhinos to Uganda’s national parks, there are now 2 families of a mother and father and both have produced babies, Obama being one of them. The hippos visit to our camp at night. The time when as I came out of the toilet I spotted in the darkness what I am sure was a crocodile just 10 meters away from me, then for the rest of the night we could see the creatures eyes lit up by the campfire as it circled us. Also the tree climbing lions, it was incredible to see huge lions just relaxing in the early evening on a branch of the tree. As we were watching 1 with the window down so as to get the best shots with the camera and were just contemplating getting out of the car to get even better shots another appeared out of the undergrowth. She didn’t really pay us a lot of attention, just strolled leisurely up to the tree, started to climb and then find a comfortable branch on which to relax.

Each time I went hill climbing in the rolling hills surrounding the lodge, admiring the beautiful views of the small villages, farm land and matoke trees.

Visiting the dentist in Ntungamo having lost a filling and having it filled without having an injection, I think I made permanent marks in his dentist chair I gripped it so hard. Also the day that I had my hair braided by about 6 or 7 women, so of which were customers or just passing in the street!

My mattatu record, each time I used a mattatu (12 seater minibus) I would count how many people they would try to cram in. My previous record had been about 19 or 20, although I started cheating and counting children, babies, goats and even chickens. This one night though they managed to squeeze in 29 grown adults including the conductor who had to crawl in head first through the side window.

And finally the leaving parties including when the Lodge was turned into a nightclub and the leaving meal prepared for me by Alex and his family.

It was a sad moment when it became time to leave as my little banda had become my home and I had made so many great friends. However I new that there were a lot more adventures to look forward to on the rest of my travels.

Volunteering

Volunteering

Well, I've now been here for a month and a half and have so much to tell. I'll have to break it down into smaller sections so as not to bore you all. I guess I should start with some of the volunteering activities that I have been doing.

Currently the children are off from school for a month, so there is a new classroom being built and I have been doing some plastering around the windows and doors, painting walls and removing the scaffolding after the builders had finished building the new classroom. The bricks are made of a mixture of mud, sand and cement and are not as long standing as bricks in the UK. They have a life of about twenty years and then any structures tend to be repaired using mud, sand and cement or demolished and rebuilt.

I have also been doing computer classes with teenagers. At the high schools they learn how to use a computer from a book, but they rarely get the opportunity to actually use one as the schools often can't afford them. When they arrive on the first day of training, they struggle to use the mouse and can't find the correct key on the keyboard. But they pick it up very quickly, so that by the second or third day they are managing to use the mouse properly and use 2 hands to type.

I have also created enrollment forms, register and school accounts to help the school manager and teachers run the school better. Since I have arrived, the number of pupils has risen rapidly from about 60 to over 100 and they were struggling to monitor what children had enrolled, what they were supposed to be paying and what had already been paid. The standard fee for a term is 25,000 shilling (Less then £10) which includes posho (maize) porridge at about 10am and a free school uniform, although some of the poorer families and orphans are paying less or being sponsored. You can check on the Uganda Lodge website if you are interested in sponsoring.

The most fun though has been playing with the children. The age range is about 4 – 7 although some are older including a 12 year old. A few times I've taken a football and tried to organise a game where I'm the goalkeeper and they've got to try and score past me, although this usually ends in chaos as they seem more intent on climbing all over me and swinging on my arms, I think at one point and had about 6 swinging on me!

Some of the tasks for the next few weeks includes building some playground furniture, completing the school enrollment policy, more painting, some general repairs and computer classes.

Selecting Talapia from the boat, they were still flapping.

Fishermen on Lake Victoria.

View accross Lake Victoria.

Market just off Lake Victoria.

A view accross Kampala.

Zaki and Rapael stood with the hotel owner of Deep Guest House, on my first night in Kampala.

Finally Arriving at Uganda Lodge

After leaving my house at 2pm on Thursday 1st, I finally reached my destination, Uganda Lodge, in a remote part of South Western Uganda at 10:30pm Saturday night!!

I left Bristol bus station, expecting my nervousness to rise as I made my way to Heathrow, but instead I just felt more and more excited. Not being a fan of coach travel, I would have to say that it was probably the most enjoyable coach journey I’ve ever had.

After arriving at Heathrow, I took the flight to Amsterdam where I spent several hours in central Amsterdam window shopping before heading back to the airport where I got about 3 hours sleep before my 10:40am flight to Entebbe, Uganda.

I spent most of the flight catching up on some sleep and arrived in Entebbe at 7:30pm local time, feeling more awake then when I had left.

By 8:30pm I was through immigration and had picked up my bags and started to look for my lift to my accommodation for the night in Kampala. After receiving many offers of taxis and cheap accommodation from the throng of touts outside the airport, I eventually found my guides, Zaki (Who I discovered later is related to the Bugandan Royal Family) & Raphael, who were extremely welcoming and put me at ease. I was not able to see much in the dark on my journey into Kampala, but I did see scores of people walking down the street as well as a few that we had almost knocked over as they crossed the unlit road from Entebbe to Kampala. There were people hanging about at the side of the road chatting, huge tailbacks of cars, motorbikes, taxis and buses overtaking and undertaking and appearing from all sorts of strange angles. There was a lot of beeping of horns and flashing of lights at anything that was in our path. Zaki and Raphael took me out in Kampala for food and a few beers before taking my back to my accommodation.

The plan the next morning was to have breakfast, change my money and get on the bus around 10am for my “4hr ride” to my final destination Uganda Lodge. In the end I was given my first view of Kampala in the daylight. I was taken to a market where everybody stared at the only white man, some waved and gave friendly greetings in Bugandan, English and other local languages. Some of the small children looked frightened of the Muzungu (White man). Next we went to Lake Victoria and watched the fisherman fishing (Illegally as they had no permit), before they came to the shore and we bought our Tilapia breakfast, which was cooked and eaten at Zaki’s house with Chapattis (Similar to pancakes). Then we fought through the chaos of the Kampala traffic to get my money changed and get me to the bus station. I saw a man with polio that had turned his legs to twigs lying at the side of the road, people sleeping on the pavement, bikes being ridden pilled high with matoke (savory green bananas), 10 seater taxis holding about 20 passengers, rickety shops and house built in corrugated iron, mud bricks and straw. But despite the chaos, disease and squalor everybody looked happy and were smiling and laughing. This filled me with mixed emotions of sadness, confusion and awe. I started to think of the UK with everybody looking miserable and not having even half the problems that are faced daily in Africa.

I was put on the bus and my destination was explained to the driver and one of my fellow passengers who were to ensure that I got off at the right stop. Two hours later we had still not left the bus station, during which time vendors had been selling their wares along the inside of the bus as well as through the windows. The range included drinks, food, clothes, watches, mobile phones and practically anything else that you could think of.

Finally just after 3pm, the bus set off, surprisingly with some of the vendors still on board continuing to sell their products. On the bus I got chatting to the lad next to me, Moses, who was going to his grandparents for a family meal for Easter. I asked him about the spiders and snakes that I might see, he said that I wouldn’t see many snakes, but plenty of big spiders. As we stopped in each town, more vendors ran up to the bus selling food and drinks, I purchased some BBQ bananas, meat on skewers and a coke which all cost me about 50p. After three hours there was an explosion just below where I was sat and the bus came to a rapid stop. It turned out that a tyre had exploded on one of the many pot holes in the road. Everybody on the bus took the opportunity to get some fresh air while the tyre was fixed.

We set off on our way again and Moses informed me that we were still only half way, a little over an hour later we were traveling in darkness. I started to think of the government’s advice on not traveling at night in Uganda due to the threat of ambush and robbery. Moses said to me that he was surprised that a Muzungu was traveling alone at night. Finally I was approaching my destination, some of my fellow passengers reminded the driver and conductor that my stop was approaching, however due to the increasingly frantic calls it appeared that the driver was reluctant to stop, until finally he trod down hard on the brake pedal and I was able to struggle off with my bags, almost forgetting my huge rucksack which was stored in the luggage compartment. Both my hosts (who met me at the roadside) and I were able to stop the bus and retrieve the bag before it was taken off to Rwanda.

Two and a half days of travel and I’d finally made it!!

Totally unprepared

Well, the time is almost here for me to make my way to Uganda and I’m still totally unprepared and have not even had time to think how this time next week I’m going to be there.

Thanks though to everybody who have tried organise me, I must be 90% there now and I know that you have all suffered to get me to that!!!

Also thanks for the donations towards building materials for my volunteer placement in Uganda, I assure you that the money will not be going on beer as so many of you have said (For any that still remain cynical, I will try and itemise the costs of the building materials!!)

For those of you that don’t know my route is a follows (hopefully):

April - July

Uganda

July – November

Russia

Mongolia

China

Tibet

Nepal

India

November – January

Australia

January – March

Chile

Peru

Brazil

Not sure what access I’m going to have to my blog in Uganda, but I will provide an update of how things are going as soon as I can.