If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.

Ugandan proverb 

My first trip into eastern Africa was one I'll certainly never forget.

Kampala was madness-- red dirt roads, sloppy mud from the rains, sent flying by a never-ending stampede of motorcycles and trucks, bare-feet and high-heels and everything in between. Street carts and butcher shops sending out aromas both mouth-watering and stomach-turning. Recycled tin being banged on with an ear-splitting din, as ever-growing piles of pots and pans and car parts reached for the skies. Shouting and honking and barking and laughing-- the sounds of a million lives spiraling around each other at a dizzying speed.

We piled into too-full buses to explore the mouth of the Nile at Jinja, the waterfalls and coffee fields of Sipi, and then the most unforgettable part of the trip: to Bwindi Forest, where we hiked to see the last wild gorillas as they wandered through the dense jungles. Meeting a silverback, cowering in petrified terror as he roared at us to remind us he was the only King that mattered there, was a heart-stopping moment that will always remind me of the power and possibility of the natural world.