facttime

Just like in 2020 , the number of books I read last year  dipped below the 100 mark. For most people, reading 74 books in a year is still a lot, but in 2022, I wanted to try to prioritise reading for fun again. And to hold myself accountable, I'm going to write a post every two months picking out my five favourite books from among those I've read. So far, this is working quite well, as it's the end of February and I've already read 22 books. Here are the five that I most enjoyed reading. 1. We Are All Birds of Uganda  by Hafsa Zayyan. When I travel, I love to read books set in the places I'm visiting and when I spotted Hafsa Zayyan's novel in a bookshop just after I'd returned from a trip to Uganda , it was a serendipitous discovery. In present-day London, successful lawyer Sameer has been offered an exciting new role in Singapore. Accepting the position should be an easy decision, but when his childhood friend is badly hurt in a racially motivated attack, S...

At the end of my last post about my recent East African adventure , which focused on my time in Kenya, we had just managed to catch our flight to Uganda, with minutes to spare. Once I'd caught my breath, I sat back to enjoy the one-hour flight with Kenya Airways, which passed over Lake Victoria before landing at the lakeside former Ugandan capital, Entebbe. Although we'd had to take a PCR test the day before, Uganda requires all entrants to take a PCR test on arrival at the airport. You can pay for this on arrival, but it's faster if you pay for it online in advance. The whole process took about 15 minutes, and then I was able to proceed through immigration to the baggage hall. You receive your results by WhatsApp within 2–3 hours. Don't lose your stamped receipt for your PCR test as you'll be required to show it several times before leaving the airport! At the airport, I withdrew some Ugandan shillings (a local friend recommended Stanbic Bank for the best rates) a...

After two years in which I travelled abroad only twice and only to short-haul destinations — Malta  and Porto — I had the opportunity to travel to East Africa for some meetings at the end of January. Planning a trip that required visas and non-COVID medications on top of all of the COVID requirements was a little overwhelming at short notice, but it was all worth it. I've never been to East Africa before and although I didn't have a lot of free time, I got a real taste of both Kenya and Uganda and can't wait to go back to both countries for a longer holiday. I spent the first six days of my trip in Kenya, spending two nights and one full day in Nairobi, before travelling to Mombasa, where I spent three days and then returned for a final night in Nairobi. This blog post is all about the Kenya part of my trip; I wrote about my adventures in Uganda in this post . I flew direct from London with BA to Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, a nine-hour daytime flight...