We have just been (expertly) driven by Herbert from Murchison Falls to Fort Portal - a distance of about 225km as the crow flies - probably more like 250km in reality. However, all but the last 50km was on dirt roads and so the journey took 10 hours - including 9 hours actual driving time!

The section in the photo had been the scene of a big snarl up when a truck had got stuck the previous day and some people didn't get through till 0100 the next morning. However, the photo is misleading in that the vast majority of the unsealed roads were pretty well graded and we were actually making good time until the last 50km or so before we joined the tar road.

That last 50km of unsealed road took for ever. Some of it hadn't been graded for a long time and was badly rutted - so Herbert was frequently reduced to crawling along at less than 20kph just to avoid pinging us around the cabin of the Land Cruiser.

However, it was the bits of this section that had been recently regraded that were the worst - partly because the surface was soft and partly because there had also been heavy rain the previous day. The result was that with the exception of a small area on the crown of the camber where a few vehicles had compressed the earth into a semblance of a track, the rest of the road was like skating on top of a greasy pole.

At one stage we came across a big truck which had got stuck on the top of the camber, with a growing number of cars backing up because there wasn't enough space to get past - but Herbert went for it and launched the Land Cruiser at the gap on the right - near side wheels slithering around on the road and offside wheels up on the bank - which was just as well, because otherwise we would probably still be there.

At a later stage when the road had improved a bit we actually were forced off the road. A big convoy of vehicles came through in a huge cloud of dust led by police and UN Land Cruisers with blue lights flashing and headlights on - and behind them a fleet of big buses. Every time we thought it had come to an end another group of buses would emerge from the dust cloud. As they roared past Herbert explained that they were taking Congolese refugees to a UN camp we had seen earlier in the day on the shores of Lake Albert.

That was such a striking image, having driven down the east side of Lake Albert - where there are lots of signs of economic development triggered or directly funded by the oil industry - new and upgraded roads, depots, offices, new schools and health centres. In the Congo by contrast they haven't got started - mainly because of the security situation there, but also because the companies initially given the licences had them taken away in favour of others with links to the president!