Day 10: Mburo National Park – Equator Point – Mabamba Swamp – Shoebill Boat Safari – Entebbe

So, it’s Day Ten, and the thing about Day Ten is that you’ve abandoned the idea that this trip has a coherent narrative arc. Uganda refuses to be distilled into any neatly packaged, “Eat, Pray, Love”-esque adventure story. The country, like nature itself, just is—complex, contradictory, and constantly surprising. And today, on what should be the winding-down leg of the journey, you find yourself hurtling through a final string of unlikely experiences, starting with the Equator Point.

Let’s say it: The Equator Point is the tourism equivalent of a novelty T-shirt. It’s gimmicky, a bit self-aware, and something you do more out of obligation than genuine curiosity. You stop because everyone stops. You take the photo because everyone takes the photo. The whole setup is designed for maximum Instagram potential, complete with a giant marker and a sign reminding you that you are standing on the imaginary line that divides the Earth’s hemispheres. The guides will even do a little trick, demonstrating the Coriolis effect by swirling water on either side of the line. You smile, nod appreciatively, and pretend you’re not thinking about how much better this would be if you were five years old.

But then you leave, and something weird happens. You realize that even this overtly touristy pit stop has a kind of quiet magic to it. The Equator is real—it’s a thing that exists, even if it’s just a line on a map—and standing there, with one foot in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern, you can’t help but feel a tiny flicker of awe. It’s the kind of awe that sneaks up on you, like the Earth itself reminding you that no matter how cynical you’ve become, there are still forces at work in the universe that you will never fully grasp.

Next up is Mabamba Swamp, which sounds, and frankly is, exactly where you half-expect to get swallowed by the Earth itself. Mabamba is a wetland on the shores of Lake Victoria, and it’s famous for one reason: the Shoebill, a bird so strange and prehistoric-looking that it feels like nature’s inside joke. If you haven’t heard of a Shoebill, imagine a bird the size of an awkward teenager with a beak that looks like it was ripped off an ancient sculpture of a dinosaur. It stares at you as a judge stares at a criminal about to be sentenced. The Shoebill doesn’t just see you; it evaluates you, and you can’t help but feel found wanting.

The Shoebill Safari is a boat ride through the swamp, and when I say “boat,” I mean a wooden structure that seems to have been cobbled together with precisely zero regard for your safety. You and your guide push off from the shore into the labyrinthine network of channels, the water thick with lilies and the air heavy with the damp, humid silence of the swamp. There’s a sense that you’ve left the world behind and entered a realm where time has slowed.

The thing about searching for Shoebills is that it’s mostly waiting. The bird is elusive, which makes it all the more mythical in your mind as you float through the reeds, scanning the horizon for any sign of movement. The guide, who has done this a million times before, tells you not to worry—they almost always spot at least one Shoebill, though not always right away. And so, you drift. The sun beats down in that unrelenting equatorial way that makes you question every life choice that led you here. But then, just as you’re about to lose hope (and perhaps your mind), there it is.

The Shoebill stands motionless, like a sentinel from a forgotten epoch, as if it’s been waiting for you this entire time. It’s standing in the water, staring at nothing—or maybe staring at everything, including the part of your soul you’ve been avoiding. There’s something deeply unsettling about the way it doesn’t move; it just fixes you with that impossibly ancient gaze. And in that moment, you feel a strange connection to this creature, as if you’ve both somehow ended up in the same swamp, trying to figure out what it all means.

But the Shoebill doesn’t care about your existential musings. After a few long, deliberate minutes of sizing you up, it turns away with a casual indifference that reminds you that you are, once again, an intruder in a world that doesn’t owe you anything. You snap a few photos because what else can you do, but deep down, you know that no image will capture what it felt like to be judged by this prehistoric relic of a bird.

After the Shoebill has sufficiently humbled you, the boat glides back through the swamp, and you return to shore with the kind of quiet reverence that comes from having encountered something beyond words. It’s a feeling you’ll try to explain to people later, but you know it will sound absurd. “Yeah, I saw a bird. It was intense.”

The day winds down in Entebbe, which feels like a return to civilization after the unrelenting wildness of the past week and a half. You’d think that by now, you’d be relieved to be back in a town with proper roads and functioning Wi-Fi, but instead, there’s this odd sense of deflation, like the return to normalcy has stripped something essential away. Entebbe is charming, sure, with its colonial architecture and sleepy vibe, but after days spent in Uganda’s untamed heart, it feels almost too orderly, too small.

You end the evening by the shores of Lake Victoria, the same lake that fed into the swamp where you met the Shoebill. The water laps gently at the shore, and for a moment, you believe you’ve come full circle. But, of course, Uganda isn’t interested in neat circles. It’s a place that refuses to be packaged, labelled, and filed away under “life-changing experiences.” It leaves you with fragments—moments of awe, discomfort, beauty, and confusion—stitched together in a way that defies straightforward narratives.

As the sun sets over Lake Victoria, you think about all the places you’ve been: the impenetrable forests, the villages, the savannahs, the swamps. And you realize that Uganda has done something remarkable: it has forced you to let go of your need to understand it. The Shoebill, the gorillas, the children at Little Angels, and the endless horizon of Lake Bunyonyi are not here to give you meaning. They exist, with or without you.

Tomorrow, you’ll leave Uganda. You’ll board a plane, return to your life, and try to explain to people what it was like. But you’ll fail. Because Uganda isn’t something you can explain. It happens to you—wild, elusive, and profoundly indifferent. And, somehow, that’s more than enough.