Backpacking in Uganda🇺🇬: Death Bikes Then Our Crazy Night For $1.75 In A Tiny Room At Gloria Guest House, Tororo

“I go crazy. Oh so crazy. Living on my own. Dee o de de dee o de de. I don’t have no time for no monkey business” – Freddie Mercury.

Trust me when I say this was one of the craziest and scariest nights of my life, and I’d say so for my travel buddy Malina too. You know how it is when backpacking in Africa – a 2 hour bus trip turns into a 6 hour bus trip which then becomes an 18 hour bus trip. A $1 coffee turns into a $2 coffee and so on. You just have to go with it. This was a mental journey and one I haven’t covered yet on my blogs or books – I have way too many stories like this. If I stopped travelling now, I could write books on it for 100 years. My writing can’t ever even put into words how nuts this day was. After all the madness, we actually smiled and even made it to a bar later…

We started the day in Nakuru in Kenya in a decent hotel called The Royal Palm Hotel. That hotel had fans, electricity, air conditioning, on/off Wi-Fi and a great balcony view of the city. Seriously. We were living the high life.

I remember we got to the mini-bus stop really early, just before 9 a.m. It was supposed to be a trip overland to Jinja, in 3 or 4 steps, where we would spend the night and the next day tour the place where the River Nile begins. At least that was the plan, but that didn’t happen of course. Not even for hardcore long-term backpackers like Malina and I…nothing runs smoothly anymore…

Jinja is in Uganda, so we expected to cross the border early afternoon and get to Jinja around 8 – 9 p.m. at the latest, then find a hotel, grab some dinner, drinks and a sleep. The route seemed simple, all on shared mini-buses. Nakuru to Eldoret (2.5 hours). Then Eldoret to Malaba on the border (2.5 hours) to Uganda. Then we’d allow 1-2 hours to cross the border (immigration, queues, waiting around etc.) and onwards to Jinja (4-5 hours). Of course none of that happened, and when midnight struck, we were lucky that we had just about got into Uganda!

That first bus from Nakuru to Eldoret was delayed by 2 hours (while we were sitting on it). Then we had a 2-3 hour wait in Eldoret. Not normally bad for a backpacker to have 2-3 hours in a city to explore, is it?! But we couldn’t really leave the bus station area, because sod’s law when you do that, that is when the bus will leave or another bus will come. We had already been on shared minibuses the 2 days before after coming back from the Maasai Mara National Park where we did safari before feeding giraffes. We were tired and weary by now.

They asked for my name and I said “Jonny” and they wrote it as “Jon E”! Classic. I had a few bus tickets that day.

We did have a quick walk each aroiund Eldoret, as there were two of us, one could stay and the other go. We had lunch together and I had beer and coffee as we waited. Lunch was a rock hard sandwich, two boiled eggs and a sausage.

That bus finally left just before dusk and after a scary ride, we arrived at the Malaba border crossing really late. Darkness had fallen.

It was very dark everywhere and nothing was obvious. There were only lights at the border building. It was a tough border crossing and a windy night. I lost a lot of my photos from that trip, but here are some that were recovered.

Once we had been stamped in to Uganda (for the third time on that trip), we needed to get a driver to take us to our hotel. Well we had nothing booked of course as we had expected to be in Jinja that night – a bigger city and more touristic, so we could easily find somewhere. There were also no drivers or taxis at this time of night on the Uganda side. It was probably about 9 p.m. We were lost and it was dark, so we walked for a bit. There was a light ahead and it was a petrol station. This was our last chance to find a bed for the night. The Ugandan side of this border at night has no shops, no village, nothing. It’s just wilderness plus this lonely petrol station which was a Godsend. We met a motorbike driver there and he didn’t understand us, but we persevered. Eventually, we came to a deal with this driver here, his name Gregory. He wanted Malina to go with him and he would get his friend to take me. But I refused. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t split from Malina at this time of night, it wasn’t safe, there was no way I would let her go off in the dark with a stranger on a bike at a petrol station. We actually had no idea where we were or which way it was to Tororo.

This left us with two options –

1.Malina and I stay at this lit up petrol station all night until sunrise (like 5 a.m.) and then look for a connection.
2.We convince Gregory to take BOTH of us on the back of his motorbike.

Malina and I are both slim, so he agreed to take us both, but the health and safety wasn’t there. The motorbike wasn’t even a good one. The wind was wild. We had no other choice here stranded in the darkness, so Malina got on behind Gregory and I hopped on behind her swearing I would keep her safe and protect her all the way to Tororo. But the journey was mad. It was through a wicked wind – no lamposts or lights anywhere. I kept thinking I was going to fall off and die. We couldn’t see a thing and we just held on tight to each other. I prayed about 30 times during the 45 minute trip. We told him – just take us to a cheap hotel in Tororo, the nearest “big town”. But Tororo was small. Did it even have any hotels? We had no idea what was ahead.

We took a risk and this was a wild journey – really wild and dodgy, I had both our backpacks on my back and had to cling tight and equalise them/stabilise them. I don’t know how, but we made it and suddenly Gregory pulled up into a courtyard next to the below building…it was GLORIA GUEST HOUSE!

We just wanted a bed. It must have been 9 p.m. now but it just seemed much later to me. It was shut of course, oh great. But Gregory pulls out his phone and dials a number. He then prays and crosses himself, which I was delighted with. He was a good man and we should have trusted him more at the start. He got Gloria up to come and let us in. The entrance door to the hotel was nuts.

Gloria finally arrived and we asked for the cheapest and smallest room. We could either pay 10,000 Ugandan Shillings ($3.50 US) or 15,000 Ugandan Shillings ($5 US). So we went for the cheapest one – $3 US Dollars option and we didn’t care how good or bad it was. We were safe. The light worked, the lock worked and we had a tiny bed and a shower/toilet/sink all together. All for $1.75 each a night!

The water was cold of course but I was sweaty as hell so I needed to try it.

We even had a lock on our door…

I loved travelling with Malina as we were on the same wavelength on so many things. This room was tiny so she also wanted to go into the town like me. She wanted Wi-Fi and to relax and charge her phone and I wanted a beer and football, so we both found a great solution – go to the swanky hotel in the city and we could do all that there! The electric didn’t work at Gloria, but for $1.75 we didn’t care.

We headed along Bazaar Street to the nearby Crystal Hotel which was the swanky and dear option in town! It had Wi-Fi, beer, football on TV (Arsenal beat Watford 1-0) and electricity! We also grabbed some street food for dinner before succumbing to our tiny bed back in Gloria Guest House. For sure, we would only stay one night here. It was enough for my lifetime.

We asked our motorbike driver Gregory to pick us up in the morning and drive us to get a bus that went to Jinja! All of this really happened and Gloria’s Guesthouse really exists. It’s probably just that no other tourists ever sleep there. When I Googled it, the first things that came up were the video I made and this blog post. That’s what happens when you Google “Gloria’s Guest House Tororo” and it also brings up TWO Gloria Guest House options, when I clicked on both neither resembled the one we stayed in…

So the mystery remains, but we were really there. One night in Tororo. I’d never even heard of Tororo when I woke up that day! We had survived. On with the show…

Here is a video I made at Gloria’s Guesthouse and one from the beer and football at Crystal Hotel: