The highlight of our journey to Uganda was viewing the endangered mountain gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park. We had two opportunities to see them and had different experiences both times.
There is no electrical grid in Buhoma – the name of the settlement that includes the buildings both inside and outside of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park. It took 180km (111 miles) of poor dirt roads to get here and the nearest paved road is 85km (53 miles) away. Our purpose for coming to Buhoma was to see the mountain gorillas in the wild.
Our final stop and national park experience in Uganda was at Lake Mburo. Here we took a late afternoon walking safari to see the animals in a more intimate setting.
We are now flying over the Atlantic in the midst of a 30+ hour odyssey home, which is comprised of four flights: first to Nairobi, then Brussels and Chicago, before the final leg to LAX.
The first few days of our time in Glacier National Park were spent on the west side of the continental divide. Here we enjoyed our lakeside hotel room, drove along scenic roads and took several day hikes to beautiful lakes.
We are currently crossing the Kalahari Desert. The distance from Windhoek, Namibia to Maun, Botswana is 896 km and will take nine hours.
We had some delays in reaching Costa Rica, but once we arrived there we enjoyed our time at Drake Bay, on the Pacific Ocean coast. We spent time relaxing in our cabin on the beach as well as taking a day trip to Cano Island, where we hiked and snorkeled.
The highlight of the second part of our Costa Rica trip was a day trip to Corcovado National Park, which provided some great hiking and nature viewing opportunities amidst the rain forest and ocean beaches.
We are now in Brisbane, Australia. To get here from Delhi was quite an adventure, with three flights and the total elapsed time taking 29 hours from hotel to hotel.
We are currently on a bus back to Chiang Mai. We’ve spent the last week in the north near where the boarders of Thailand, Myanmar (Burma) and Laos meet.
