Jinja

Jinja has an attractively lush location on the northern shore of Lake Victoria above the Ripon Falls, identified by Speke in 1862 as the source of the Nile, but submerged following the construction of the Owen Falls Dam in the 1950s. The colonial town was formerly the industrial heartland of Uganda, with a current population of 300,000 people.

One of Uganda’s largest town, Jinja, lies about 80km east of Kampala, overlooking the point where the Nile flows out of Lake Victoria (the Source of The Nile). And it is the mighty river rather than the moderately interesting town that attracts visitors to Jinja.

The thrilling series of grade-five rapids below Bujagali Falls, a magnet for adrenaline tourists, has emerged as perhaps the single most popular tourist activity in Uganda, arguably surpassing even the mountain gorillas of the southwest.

There is also a certain poignancy attached to standing on the slopes from where Speke first identified that geographical Holy Grail which, less than a decade earlier, had lured an obsessed (and hopelessly misdirected) Livingstone to a feverish death near Lake Bangweulu in Zambia.

No less impressive is the knowledge that the water flowing past these green slopes will eventually drain into the Mediterranean, following a 6,500km journey through the desert wastes of Sudan and Egypt.

Jinja has an attractively lush location on the northern shore of Lake Victoria above the Ripon Falls, identified by Speke in 1862 as the source of the Nile, but submerged following the construction of the Owen Falls Dam in the 1950s. The colonial town was formerly the industrial heartland of Uganda, with a current population of 300,000 people.

Although its population makes it one of the largest urban centers in Uganda, Jinja is far from a metropolis that straddles the source of the Nile. First-time visitors wandering around Jinja’s compact, low-rise town center might reasonably reflect on what they can expect of the country’s third-largest town!

Jinja suffered severely during the Amin years and subsequent periods of economic and political turmoil. Still, a more recent economic upswing has been mirrored by the emergence of the river corridor as a major tourism center in the region, emphasizing adrenalin-oriented activities.

The town center admittedly boasts little of genuine historical note, though some fine colonial-era Asian architecture — epitomized by the restored 1919 Madvhani House on Main Street — complemented by a spread of thickly vegetated residential suburbs carved from the surrounding jungle, does give Jinja a compelling sense of place.