In transit in Nairobi airport having got up at 0600, left Fort Portal by road at 0700 and checked in at Entebbe for the flight here at about 1330.

The Fort Portal to Kampala road is excellent and Herbert made really good time until we hit the usual traffic crawl between Kampala and Entebbe and the excruciatingly slow - and completely pointless - security checks at the airport perimeter gate (passengers have to get out and be frisked, but neither the drivers nor the vehicles are checked).

The Nairobi flight departed at 1450 and landed about 50 minutes later and my next flight - to Lilongwe - departs at 2130 and lands just before 2300. A very long day and far too much of it spent in airports - my fourth visit to Entebbe airport this trip and my sixth to Jomo Kenyatta, so far (not counting my flight from Wilson Airport - also in Nairobi).

On the bright side, however, after this evening I only have one more transit here - on my final journey back to the UK in three weeks time.

Postscript

My day didn't improve. When boarding was eventually called for the Kenya Airways Lilongwe flight we followed one of the ground staff from the terminal to the apron, but there was no plane there. Fifteen minutes later a bus turned up to take us to the plane, but after sitting on the plane for ten minutes with the temperature steadily rising, there was obviously something wrong - and the captain came on to confirm that the auxiliary power unit (which is used to start the engines and powers the aircon on the ground) wasn't working.

By the time they got the engines started we were an hour and a half late and so we didn't get to Kamuzu Banda International until midnight Malawi time - 0100 Uganda time. Nothing was open and most of the internal lighting in the terminal had been switched off. There were only little pools of light around the Immigration desks and baggage retrieval, but both processes were mercifully quick. The roads were deserted and the taxi driver knew my hotel, but we had to wake up the duty manager to get in!