Last Sunday a small group of us (Mike a volunteer from the Peace Corps , Misha a social worker from Germany, Carl-Heinz a visitor from Germany and I walked to the top of Wanale (pronounced Wanally) ridge. This is a ridge formed from the volcanic flow from Mount Elgon many years ago. It is about 2000m above sea level, so the climb was about 800m as Mbale is already just under 1200m above sea level. Our guide was Andrew - an 11 year old boy who is from the village at the top but who lives in the slum at the bottom of the ridge. On the day his father Steven decided that he would accompany us as well, to visit his family at the top.
We left Salem at 7am and started walking from the Mount Elgon Hotel at about 7.30 am. It was a long hard climb
and in several places we crossed waterfalls
and there were some very steep drops from the side of the path. There are no pictures of the really steep bits because we were concentrating very hard, but I think you can see from this how far we came up.
One of the things that surprised me was the bits of land on the side of very steep hills that were being cultivated for crops.
This is one of the waterfalls that can be see from about half way –
the next pictures are when we were standing on top of it. Looking over the top it was a VERY long way straight down.
The views from the top are stunning.
I was really surprised at the number of people living there. They seemed to have a reasonably good quality of life and be well fed.
Apparently it rains a lot up there so the crops are well watered. I was also surprised at the number of people who passed us on the steep path to the top. There were ladies with big piles of goods on their heads and with small children (about 3 years of age) in tow, who made the climb look very easy.
When we reached the top I was very glad as I don’t think I could have gone up much further.
Mike and our 2 guides were like mountain goats and were as spritely as ever. I had to bandage my foot as I had developed a very large blister on my left heel and all the skin had come off even though I put a plaster on it. My boots have not been worn that often and the constant rubbing from the upward climb really rubbed the back of my heel.
I really noticed the difference in the altitude whenever we hit an incline at the top and I could really feel that I was much more breathless that when we were at lower altitude, I expect it is partly because at home we live fairly close to sea level and so the difference is quite considerable. The air was also much cooler at the top which was really refreshing although it was a hot day.
Our general consensus on getting to the top was that we were not happy to go back down the same way and so we walked to join the road. It turned out that the road was 14 miles back to Mbale. We ate the snacks that we had brought with us and Steven also picked some passion fruits and showed how to open them by twisting them with your hands. Standing at the top slurping really fresh passion fruit out of their skins was a memorable experience - don’t think they will ever taste any where near as good again.
It took a good while and Carl-Heinz and Mischa took a boda from near the top he was finding the distance a bit too much. We trudged down the road and I eventually got back to the Mount Elgon Hotel with weary feet by about 4pm. I left a bag there at the beginning of the day so that I could have a swim and shower after the walk. I needed at least 2 bottles of water and something good to eat (as well as a beer) before I felt human again.
This is the picture from the hotel and you can see the top of the ridge that we were on in the background - pretty impressive eh??
Then we had a taxi back to Salem.
I thought my muscles would ache afterwards but they didn’t, I just felt very tired and needed early nights for the next 2 days. Then we had the objective setting workshops and lots of assistance was needed afterwards (hence the delay in the blog).
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