Getting Around Uganda

Uganda is bigger than it looks on a map and slower than it looks on a schedule. Two things shape a travel day here: the state of the road, and one morning a month when the country is told to stop.

National cleaning day, and why it is stricter than it sounds

The Government of Uganda has declared that the final Saturday of each month, between 7 and 10 in the morning, is a mandatory nationwide cleaning day. Residents clean homes, neighborhoods, markets, schools, health facilities, places of worship, roads and drainage channels.

What matters for a visitor is the enforcement language. All businesses must close and all non-essential movement of people and vehicles is prohibited, with the sole exemption for emergency services and security actors, and the government states that police will enforce it.

Rwanda's Umuganda closes services for a morning. This goes further, because it restricts movement rather than commerce. The FCDO adds that it is unclear how widely this will be enforced, including what it means for hotel and airport access, and advises asking your travel provider. Foreigners are not the intended participants but may be affected.

Do not schedule an early transfer, a flight connection or a park entry on the last Saturday morning of a month without checking. It is the most predictable disruption in the Ugandan calendar and the least known outside it.

Boda bodas

Motorcycle taxis, universally boda bodas, are how Kampala moves. They are fast, cheap, everywhere, and app based in the capital, and they are also the reason Ugandan hospitals run dedicated trauma wards. Helmets are provided by the app based services and are frequently not by the rest.

Plenty of visitors use them without incident. Choose knowingly: an app booking in daylight over a short distance is a different proposition from a flagged ride at night in the rain.

Roads, distance and the rains

The main routes between Kampala, Entebbe and the larger towns are surfaced. Beyond them, road quality falls off quickly and journey times are governed by surface rather than distance. Driving after dark outside urban areas is best avoided.

Parts of the north east are likely to flood during the rainy seasons, from March to May and October to November, and the FCDO advises monitoring local media and using only suitably equipped four wheel drive vehicles there.

Domestic flights to the airstrips serving the western and northern parks exist and are worth pricing against two days of driving.