The White Nile changes its name five times before it even becomes itself
The White Nile is the longer but weaker of the Nile's two great branches, named for the pale clay clouding its water. Leaving Lake Victoria it is called the Victoria, Kyoga, Albert and Mountain Nile in turn, and only at a South Sudanese lake does it earn its proper name.
Compared with the Blue Nile, the White Nile carries less water but runs longer, broader and shallower, and its milky tint comes from suspended clay. Strictly, the name applies only below Lake No, where the Bahr al Jabal and Bahr el Ghazal meet. Loosely, it covers the whole chain from Lake Victoria, and if the lake's headwaters are counted the farthest source lies some 3,700 km from the Blue Nile junction. That source is itself disputed: the Kagera is Lake Victoria's longest feeder, but whether its ultimate head is the Ruvyironza in Burundi or the Nyabarongo from Rwanda's Nyungwe Forest is unsettled.
The river leaves Lake Victoria at Jinja in Uganda, passing two power stations and then Bujagali Falls about 15 km downstream. It crosses the country northwest to Lake Kyoga and west toward Lake Albert. Karuma Bridge, built in 1963 to serve cotton growers, became a convoy checkpoint during the Lord's Resistance Army insurgency, and in 2009 Uganda chose to build a 750-megawatt dam nearby rather than the 200-megawatt plant the World Bank had backed. At Murchison Falls the whole river squeezes through a slot about seven metres wide as it drops into the western arm of the East African Rift.
North of Lake Albert, the Albert Nile cuts Uganda's West Nile sub-region off from the rest of the country, crossed by a single bridge and a ferry. Entering South Sudan at Nimule it becomes the Bahr al-Jabal, the river of the mountain, tumbling through gorges and rapids such as Fula before spreading into the enormous Sudd swamp. An offshoot, the Bahr el Zeraf, wanders through the marsh and rejoins later.
East of Lake No, 120 km of barely sloping channel lead to the Sobat, whose silty floods deepen the pale colour. Past Malakal the river flows north without swamps, passing Kodok, scene of the 1898 Fashoda Incident that closed the Scramble for Africa, before meeting the Blue Nile at Khartoum. Boats can travel from Lake Albert to Khartoum through the Jebel Aulia Dam, though the Juba-to-Uganda stretch needs work.
Source: White Nile
