Consider yourself warned, there is nothing modern about Modern Coast Bus Company.
By Cherono Tongoi
Last November, an idea to travel to Rwanda was shared by my friend C. I slept on it and declared: “Why not!” After all, I had some days to spare over the festive period.
And so we agreed – a road trip from Nairobi to Kigali by bus from December 16–20 it was.
You see, C is big on nature and wanted to take in the scenery as we crossed borders, hence the reason for opting for road travel. As for me, what’s a trip through Uganda without a bite of roast maize at the Busia border point and a swig of cold Nile lager in Kampala?
Also, is there a better way to gauge the pulse of East Africa than by haggling with roadside traders in broken Kiswahili?
A road adventure for regional rookie travel baddies was clearly in the offing… until it almost wasn’t.
“Which bus company?” I asked C as we began setting things in motion.
“Modern Coast,” she answered. “I hear they are good.”
I was tasked with securing the travel tickets, while C was in charge of accommodation.
On December 3, I called the Modern Coast Bus Company offices in Nairobi, and a lady called Frida assisted me in making the bookings. A return trip from Nairobi to Kigali at KES12,000 for me, and a KES9,800 ticket from Nakuru to Kigali and back for my friend.
Finally, the trip is locked. We are excited, and I can’t even concentrate at work. We closed the office on the 10th, and I flew to Nairobi from my workstation in Mombasa the same day for other errands as we awaited the D-Day.
At around 5.30pm on the 16th, I made my way to Accra Road (it was renamed Kenneth Matiba Road in March 2021, but this has never quite registered with many Kenyans) in downtown Nairobi, where the offices of Modern Coast are located.
I arrived in time. The bus was to leave at 8pm, but we waited for about an hour and 30 minutes before we started the journey. Which reminds me now that I should have taken it as a sign of things to come when I walked into the booking office to inquire about our bus, and a random drunkard nearby laughed and stated matter-of-factly: “Kigali ata mnaeaza kosa kutoka hapa leo (You might actually never start the trip to Kigali today).”
I should have taken him seriously, the boozer, but I dismissed him. No one was going to ruin my only trip out of the country for the year.
So the bus arrives one hour and 30 minutes late, and what do you know? It’s a completely different thing from what is displayed on their website. It’s dirty, there are no charging ports (my phone was at 60%), and, for some reason, the luggage compartment is not available for use. What’s more? The overhead storage rack can only accommodate the tiniest of bags.
Dumbstruck, I placed my small bag in the aisle just like the rest of the passengers as a friend who had seen me off reassured me that we’d most likely be transferred to a ‘modern bus’ before we exited Nairobi. If wishes were buses.
The journey begins, and I inform C in Nakuru about the state of affairs.
We reach Nakuru at 1am, where C and a few other passengers board the bus for what promises to be the trip of a lifetime. I hear one of the new passengers ask about their VIP seats, and I suppress a chuckle.
At this point, the aisle is completely full, with people stepping on the bags to pass through.
We arrived in Kisumu at 5am, and 14 more passengers boarded. That’s six extra people who have no seating space and have no choice but to stand in the aisle despite paying full non-refundable fare. “Unless the inconvenience arises from our side,” I recall Frida telling me.
So children, women, and men have to make do with the overflowing aisle, seating/standing on top of bags, bodies crushed against each other, not unlike being inside a Mumbai rush hour train.
I should mention at this point that the crew members were extremely rude to passengers and to one another. They would bicker in front of the customers without a care. A passenger who asked that the bus be stopped so he could grab a quick bite was told off.
We get to Busia border crossing at 7am. Relieved, we check in and get breakfast as we wait for the bus to be cleared. And Lord, did we wait. One, two, three, four hours.
We leave one passenger at the border as we enter Uganda at noon, as his passport was faulty/expired, as explained by the crew. A clear admission that no due diligence was done on their part during the booking and boarding stage to weed out these problems.
Goodbye Kenya, hello Uganda.
On we move, passing the many road checkpoints in Uganda until we arrive in Kampala at 6pm, way, way behind schedule.
In Kampala, we picked up more passengers, and again there was an issue of double booking. Here, the co-driver refused to board because his seat had been occupied by a passenger, and we wasted another two hours in the standoff.
At some point, I had to tell the co-driver to settle the issue with the company and let the young man, who had boarded in Kisumu, be. We eventually left.

I should mention at this point that the storage compartment that was ‘missing’ in Nairobi had been stuffed with luggage belonging to one of the crew members, and we spent an hour somewhere in Kampala as they offloaded it before transferring our bags on the aisle to the designated space.
About an hour from Kampala, we were stopped by the police. Why? The bus lacked something called a route check, or something similar. A policeman entered the vehicle and explained the situation. He added that at some point, they had denied this bus company access to Uganda because it didn’t have this particular clearance – something about accountability for accidents and fair competition.
I remember asking C how Kenya’s National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) could license the company to operate.
We spent about an hour there, and I decided to go to a roadside shop to charge my phone. I don’t know how the route check issue was resolved, but we were allowed to leave close to midnight.
About two hours from the Kigali border, at about 8 am, the vehicle started vibrating so hard. Scared, we all screamed for the driver to stop.
Apparently, it was a mechanical issue, and a boda boda (motorcycle) rider was dispatched to find a mechanic, who arrived shortly and attempted to fix the issue. I say attempted because you could hear the crew ordering him around instead of letting him do his job.
The passengers basked in the sun as they waited, buying sugarcane from passersby and bonding in collective trauma. At 11 am, the vehicle came alive, but within 10 minutes, we stopped. Same mechanical issue.
They fixed it again, but 10 minutes later, we broke down. Again.
At this point, I wanted to head back home or find other means to Kigali because it had been two days on the road, but my friend called for more patience.
This time we were lucky we had stopped close to a shopping centre. We alighted, got snacks, and charged our phones. While charging the phones, I started a conversation with a Nigerian man also travelling to Kigali. He boarded the bus in Kampala and was regretting the experience already. What made him really bitter is that he paid for a return ticket. He also mentioned that while at the waiting bay in Kampala Bus Station, someone told him they had made a grave mistake choosing Modern Coast.
Two hours later, we started again. Twenty minutes or so later, another breakdown.
It is now past 2pm and I am completely fed up. Several of us alighted, and C and I entered a taxi going to the Kigali border, swearing never to use a Modern Coast bus in our lifetime.
The taxi got us to the border post at 3.40pm and by 4.20pm we had crossed over. We met some of the passengers from our ill-fated bus, who had also sought alternative means, including the Nigerian, at the border. Everyone was exhausted.
We got to Kigali at night and we were lucky to find a gracious host who adjusted our booking plan, and we enjoyed our stay.
Our journey back was a breeze. We used Trinity Bus and we were amazed by the professionalism of its staff. Due diligence was done before boarding. We left exactly at 6pm, as scheduled, and I arrived in Nairobi at 8pm the next day as promised. Only 26 hours on the road.
There were no excess bookings, there was enough storage space, and there were charging ports. An experience I can’t compare to the 44-hour journey on the Modern Coast bus that couldn’t even get us to our destination. I keep wondering what happened to the passengers who were headed to Bujumbura and Congo on the same bus.
To sum it up, there is nothing modern about Modern Coast, and the lack of shame and accountability from its owners and staff buttresses my point. How Kenyan authorities can allow this bus company to operate is beyond me. As for its tagline ‘Travel in Style’, well…
The writer is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya. If you wish to share your travel (mis)adventures, email the editor at editor@expression.africa.