Top Gear Page #2

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'One in Burundi, found by

a Dr Burckhard Waldecker,

'and one in Rwanda, found by Joanna Lumley.

'And since our source had to be

further from the Mediterranean

'than either of these two,

it had to be further south.'

Hang on, hang on.

Here's the Nile, OK, but look.

The Nile also comes here,

into this lake, and then this lake,

which is connected to that lake.

It doesn't say on the map,

but if these two are connected, look,

this will be the source of the Nile,

down here.

Yeah, but if those two are connected,

I think we'd know about it by now,

and they would have drawn it on.

No, no, you say that,

but David Livingstone thought

the source of the Nile was down here.

So what we need to do is go here

and establish that these two are joined up,

check it out, we're in business.

And so our epic journey began.

A journey that would see us taking

on nature at its most brutal.

There would be lions, insects

and thick, glutinous mud.

We'd have to climb every mountain

and ford every stream.

And we'd have to do it all in three

second-hand cars we'd bought

for less than 1,500 quid each.

Right, my car.

Well, it's got quite a sticky

throttle, but other than that,

every single thing works,

even the air conditioning.

I've never, ever had a car with

working air conditioning

before on one of these trips,

but I have now, and it is joyous.

The Impreza is all about that engine

and drivetrain.

You're just aware,

constantly, that this is rally-bred.

The other two, they're just sporty

versions of ordinary estate cars.

This is the best car here, fact.

It's a cracking car, the Volvo 850 R.

This one's done 145,000 miles.

It's just clicked over, in fact,

onto that figure,

and you wouldn't really know.

It's so smooth,

the transmission is excellent,

the engine is silky, everything works.

Except the air conditioning.

But at least that saves me

the effort of getting really annoyed

when the other two deliberately

break it out of spite,

jealousy and small-mindedness.

Crikey! It's the Ugandan rozzers.

I think the President's

just driven past us.

A couple of rules you need to know,

really, about Uganda,

if you're coming here.

Number one, if you're a male

homosexual and you indulge in

your homosexuality, it's life imprisonment.

That's very important to know.

Also, it is compulsory here for

motorcyclists to wear crash helmets,

unless you are a woman on her way

back from the hairdressers.

Then you are allowed to wear

a carrier bag on your head instead.

I promise that's true!

At this point, the producers

told us to stop off

at the still bullet-scarred

Entebbe Airport.

It was here, in 1976, that Israeli

special forces staged a daring

operation to rescue passengers

from a hijacked airliner.

Wow, look at this!

I'll tell you what, I couldn't be

Israeli special forces.

You'd get out of breath.

I'm exhausted.

They'd be sitting there thinking,

"Help, here comes help," and then...

"Sorry, just give us five!"

More bullet holes.

'Out on the balcony,

we saw something a bit worrying.'

Is that a Ford Scorpio?

Where? There.

It is.

Estate.

I'd say that's there for one reason!

That's why they brought us here. Funny.

Funny. Because what that is...

That's the forfeit car. It is.

If one of our cars goes wrong...

Which, let's face it, James,

yours is going to break in half.

I've always liked the Scorpio!

You have not!

You know that word you like,

James, gopping?

It is gopping!

That was invented. Nothing has ever

been more gopping than that!

'And as we prepared to leave,

'it looked like one of us

would soon be driving it.'

That's full throttle.

It's revving, slightly,

but I'm not doing it.

You know this all-mechanical BMW of

yours? You were very proud of that.

Yeah.

Does it have a fly-by-wire throttle?

Yeah. Ha-ha-ha!

So it's all mechanical, except that bit?

'Jeremy broke out his vast

and sophisticated toolkit.'

What else is electrical in here?

Not the exhaust manifold.

I've done the fuse box,

if that's what that is.

That's an air filter.

Right.

"It's all mechanical,

you can mend it with a hammer!"

If this works... Yes?

Ha-ha-ha!

Soldier on.

With my throttle still not

working brilliantly,

we set off for the lakes.

But first, we had to get through

Uganda's capital city.

Kampala.

This is going to turn out to be

one of those places

with terrible crash statistics.

In fact, Hammond was wrong.

Because to have a crash,

first you have to be moving.

Holy cow!

That is...

We're never, ever, ever

going to get through.

What are we going to do, seriously, here?

We're never,

ever going to get through there.

'It's probably safe to say

the Victorian explorers

'didn't face problems as big as this.'

Jesus!

Sally Traffic, are you watching

this on Radio 2?

Because this is what we call a traffic jam.

From now on, just go, "Everything's

going very well in England, really."

My God.

Hammond, this is phenomenal.

It is the heaviest traffic ever, ever seen.

This is just like a scrapyard

on the road in front.

Cars and vans piled on top of each other.

Going to finish our days here.

Well, we're all right if we want supper.

I fancy a banana.

Excuse me?

'Not knowing the exchange rate,

I accidentally bought more than one.'

No, it's all right. Do I have all of them?

Christ! Bloody hell!

How do you do that?

How the hell do you do that?

I can't!

Three hours later, our average speed

made for grim reading.

It must quieten down soon.

It's evening now.

'But it didn't.'

It wasn't a dream.

I'm still here.

I can't get over how heavy those

bananas were.

How could she have them on her head?

'By this stage, we were pretty famished,

'but then breakfast turned up.'

Wow, that's just a meat

feast in front of me here!

Hang on, look, look. Right.

Well, you were here first,

so do I buy yours?

More bones.

Bone.

What, it's goat bone? Yeah.

I don't want that.

How much is the water?

Yes. How much is that?

This one. It just happens to be that.

Obviously, it is. Of course it is.

Thank you very much.

No, thank you. I've got one.

What is it?

Is it a chair leg?

Soon we found a dual carriageway,

and, at last, the traffic started to move.

Freedom!

That's it, that's the end!

We headed west, towards the lakes,

surprised at how easy this

exploring was turning out to be.

This is just tremendous. This

is like being in northern France.

Look at that ahead.

Ha-ha, Hammond, you don't need a Subaru.

This road is fantastically smooth.

Apparently it was built by the Chinese

in exchange for some oil deal.

It's like the Swiss have done it,

or some Austrians.

Yeah, right now, we could be on the M4.

But the point is, further on,

if things get tough, if we end up

off this road and on tracks,

the other two will be completely stuffed.

I will have the last laugh.

Wow!

It's my town!

We've just entered Jezza.

No!

When I say we've just entered Jezza,

that's a disgusting thought.

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