Traveling to Uganda
1) Visas
If you're a US citizen, you will need a visa. The government of Uganda however has streamlined this process and has a website to apply for a pre-approved visa online. I'm not sure what countries, if any, are not required to get a visa for entry into Uganda.
Go here:
https://visas.immigration.go.ug
You want to apply for an ordinary tourist visa. This will require uploading a few documents in PDF format. I'm not sure I remember all of the documents but I know it included: Passport page with your picture on it, passport picture by itself, Yellow Fever vaccination card and flight itinerary.
I also uploaded my Covid vaccination cards.
On the subject of vaccinations, I'm quite certain you will NOT get a visa if you do not get vaccinated for Yellow Fever, so I wouldn't even try if you don't get this. Covid is I think another story. However if you didn't get vaccinated, I'm guessing you will need to take test to show you don't have it.
So in the end, I uploaded my documents, made the $50 payment online at about 9pm here in Phoenix one night. When I got up the next morning, there in my email was my pre-approved visa. The email included an attachment that you need to print out and bring with you to Uganda. The letter includes a barcode. At passport control you give them your passport of course and with it the letter. They read the barcode and in short order you are on your way.
2) Air Travel
There are a number of airlines you can use to get to Entebbe Airport. I will not bore you with this. We used Qatar Airways once again leaving out of Houston. This would have us scheduled to arrive at 10:30am in Entebbe, but as it worked out we were actually a little early.
A long layover of about 8 hours or so in Doha was burned using a pass to the Al Mourjan lounge and a stay in a hotel room. Anyone who has been to Doha probably knows of the Oryx Hotel that is at that center point of the airport with the big teddy bear. Those rooms are quite pricy. Initially we weren't going to get a hotel room, but in the end we needed a sleep. The Oryx Hotel was unfortunately sold out, but we were still in luck. Just this past September a new hotel that I'm sure is run by the same people opened near gate C14. It is called the Oryx Garden hotel and the rooms there run about 1/2 the price of the bigger hotel. So we got a room there and that was worth it.
Now as some of you know, there is an outbreak of Ebola virus in the northern part of the country at the moment that apparently started prior to our arrival in Uganda. The U.S. government while we were there stepped into the situation and required anyone arriving in the U.S. who has been to Uganda to fly into one of five different airports. Houston is not on the list. Long story shortened, we ended up rebooked into Atlanta. On arrival at Passport control, the computer had us flagged and we had to go speak to an agent from the CDC. In all of about 60 seconds we were done with that and back on our way.
The beauty of this was it only cost us $275 to get an additional ticket back to Houston on Delta..... :-(
Oh well, we ended up in Houston some 5 or 6 hours later than originally planned. This would not have been so bad if we didn't have a 3 hour drive back to KJ's house in the Austin area.
Back to Qatar Airways, they did not disappoint. Check-in in Houston was a snap and handled very well. The stops in Doha were fine and they were aware there of us traveling with firearms. They keep tight control of the firearms and I find that assuring.
The only real hiccup with QA was at check-in in Entebbe on return leg. They're not quite used to the gun process and this took a bit longer than it should have. We arrived there about 3 hours before departure and used it all up. I recommend being there 4 hours in advance as a result.
On a side note, we used Travel With Guns (TWG) to book our travel. They were a great help in getting the rebooking completed and with the overall process. I have no complaints with there service.
One other recommendation is that you should try to arrive in Uganda in the morning. Traveling by road after dark is something that ours and perhaps other outfitters will not do. Once you get out of the city the chance of having a run in with animals both domestic or wild is just too high. If you have a 5 or 6 hour drive, 2 hours in the airport, its dark by 7pm, well you can do the math.
3) Firearm Importation
This process seemed to be a bit less efficient than it could be.
@JKO HUNTING SAFARIS is partnered with a local Ugandan hunting outfitter. One of the staff there will be at the airport to help you out with this. You will provide some information to him, such as serial numbers and ammunition count in advance. This will all be checked when you get to Entebbe. The slow part of it was that it seemed like 5 or 6 gov't officials there are part of this process, seems like one or at most two would be sufficient.
While a bit slow, the Ugandan officials were very courteous, polite and welcoming of us. In fact I messed up a bit. On my last trip to the gun range before leaving, I ended up with 40 rounds of .470NE which was exactly what I said I'd bring. But I ended up with 46 rounds for my .375 which was 6 more than I said I'd bring. And I knew this, but all I had to do was take those 6 rounds out of the box to bring my count to 40. But of course I forgot and as I opened my ammo box I could immediately see that there was about to be a problem.
Well the main guy there that did the count was quite okay with it. He would only let me take 40 rounds with me, he would keep the 6 extra and give them back to me when we left. And in fact he did just that.
When it was all said and done, it was about 2 hours from wheels on the landing strip to us walking out the door to start our Ugandan adventure. All in all not bad.
