Jinja

Jinja is Uganda's second-largest town with a population of almost 90,000. It lies about 80km east of Kampala, overlooking the point where Lake Victoria flows out into the mighty Nile river.

In fact the infant Nile is more of a tourist attraction than the town itself. Travellers can run the superb series of grade five rapids just below the Bujagali falls, an attraction that has surpassed the country's mountain gorillas in terms of popularity. The site is also of great historical interest; it was this place that John Hanning Speke pronounced the source of the Nile, which flows eventually into the Mediterranean after a journey of 6,500km through the desert of north Africa.

Despite its relative importance, Jinja is no great shakes as a town. Visitors will reflect on its low-rise buildings as a countrpoint to its prominence as an industrial centre of the recent past. Like much of Uganda, Jinja was negatively affected by the government of Idi Amin, but its resurgence as a tourist destination bodes well for the future. Surrounded by jungle, out of which its residential suburbs have been carved, the town has an alluring and evocative sense of place.

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