It involves revellers sitting on inflatable tubes tied together in groups and then connected to a kayak that gives the group direction as they glide downstream through both calm and white waters. The venture is operated by a company called Tubing the Nile, run by a group of ambitious young people.
Adam Bafirawala, the company founder, says the concept is derived from white water rafting although for this case, there are no rafts but a tube.
I recently joined a team of friends to take on the tubing challenge. It would be my second time doing the activity but the first for the rest of my team and just like all adventure activities, each experience is totally different.
We left Kampala eastwards to Jinja on a Friday with the intent of spending the night there and then do the tubing the day after.
However, one can also simply drive from Kampala straight to the tubing venue. The journey from Kampala city to Jinja is barely a two-hour drive on a good traffic day and from Jinja town, it is about an 8km drive on a good gravel but generally motorable road to an area called Bujagaali.
On Saturday afternoon we arrived at the venue to join another group of local tourists who like some on my team were aquaphobic but determined to tube, nevertheless. Bafirawala says this is common among the people who come here, especially Ugandans.
“Sometimes we get aquaphobic people but they actually love it the more after the experience. It is an activity that is addictive,” he said.
Our hosts had two packages on offer; the first called flat water tubing at a cost of Shs 90,000 for Ugandans, and $25 for foreigners. The second package known as white water tubing, which we settled for, goes for Shs 130,000 for Ugandans and $45 for foreigners.
This is longer and scarier for it goes through wild rapids that give you a bumpy sail. A team of professional guides captured our personal details before taking us through a safety briefing and equipping us with safety gear like helmets and life jackets.
We then took a walk through a campsite to the boat that would take us to our starting point. The about 30-minute boat ride was in itself an adventure for it treated us to the beautiful river banks dotted with caves, different flora, monitor lizards, a wide range of bird species and butterflies.
At the starting point, our guides tied the tubes together in groups with each group tied to a kayak in which a guide sat. We were then helped onto the tubes, the moment we were waiting for.
Sheer fright that was evident at the beginning turned into screams of fun as we set off downstream past the first rapid that hit us hard, drenching all of us in the process. We, and the group that trailed us, hit the rapids and sailed the calm waters in tandem with screams.
We glided past groups of fishermen in canoes and little children bathing by the river banks as the guides told us about the area’s history, the relevance of the river to the community, the names of trees and caves at the banks and why we needed to come back.
As we moved further to the calmer waters, beers were passed around for those of us who wanted the frothy drink, together with pineapples and a few biscuits to fill our stomachs before we could continue on our downstream journey.
At this point, we were told it was safe for us to swim in the river. Even if the area was deep, the heavy-duty life jackets we had on would offer protection and the guides around us would rescue us in case of anything. Many of us jumped into the cold water and swam near our tubes including those that had initially feared to get onto the expedition.
This was the highlight of the trip for me and it definitely must have been the case for the seven-year-old boy in our company who swam better than all of us in the deep waters.
According to Bafirawala, the company allows children as young as four years to do the flat water tubing. An expert photographer on a kayak had sailed with us, taking shots of all that were on the tubes since all our gadgets were gathered together for safekeeping at the banks, lest we lost them in the water.
Soon, it was the time to embark on the last leg of the journey and back to our tubes we went, gliding slowly towards our finish line.
In the areas with rapids, one gasps for breath and screams, while in areas of calm water, one is looking at different birds, small aquatic animals and vegetation along the banks or waiting on a second kingfisher bird to return and dive into the water and come out with a fish within a split second just next to your tube.
We missed the sunset at this point since the sky was a little cloudy but I had seen it on my first outing and the beautiful image has never left my mind.