8 Day Uganda Big Five And Primates Safari

An early pickup, then north out of Kampala through the Luwero triangle. About two and a half hours up we stop at Ziwa, the only place in Uganda where you can see wild rhino, poached out of the country entirely during the 1970s and 1980s and reintroduced through a breeding programme. Tracking is done on foot with rangers, walking through the bush to find a group and watching from a safe distance, and meeting a rhino at ground level rather than from a vehicle is a completely different proposition. Allow around two hours. Then on north past Budongo Forest, reaching Murchison in the late afternoon. The drive covers roughly 305 kilometres over five to six hours with the stop. We take you straight to the top of the falls, where the whole Victoria Nile is forced through a gorge barely seven metres wide before dropping 43 metres. You hear it long before you see it, and a permanent rainbow sits in the spray on a sunny afternoon.

Across the river on the Paraa ferry at first light and onto the Buligi circuit, a peninsula about ten kilometres wide between the Victoria Nile flowing into Lake Albert and the Albert Nile flowing out of it. Open grassland studded with Borassus palms, and the strongest wildlife morning most visitors will have in Uganda. Elephant number well over a thousand across the park, Uganda kob run into five figures, and the lion population sits at roughly 150 to 200 animals across fifteen to twenty prides. Rothschild’s giraffe are what make this park distinctive, once close to extinction and now recovered to well over a thousand here. Back for lunch, then the afternoon on the water. The launch cruise runs upstream from Paraa for about three hours there and back, past hippo pods and very large crocodiles, ending a hundred metres from the base of the falls where the spray reaches you.

South today, and it is a long one. We leave after breakfast and run down through Masindi, Hoima and Fort Portal, roughly six to seven hours with a lunch stop, and the country changes completely along the way. The dry Nile woodland gives out into cultivated hills, then tea, and finally the crater lake belt around Fort Portal, dozens of steep sided volcanic craters holding deep green water among banana groves. The Rwenzori range stands to the west if the cloud lifts, and there are viewpoints worth stopping at on the last stretch. Kibale protects around 795 square kilometres of moist evergreen rainforest and holds thirteen primate species, the highest density in East Africa. We check you in near Kanyanchu or on a crater rim in the late afternoon. Kibale briefs in the morning rather than before dawn, unlike the chimp forests further south, so tonight is a reasonable one after a long day on the road.

To the Kanyanchu visitor centre for the briefing, then into the forest with rangers who track by listening for pant hoots and finding the nests built the previous evening. The ranger carries a rifle, which is for warning off forest elephant rather than the primates. Roughly 1,500 chimpanzees live in Kibale, the largest population in Uganda, and the Kanyanchu community has been tracked since 1993, which is why the odds here are the best in the region. The ground is gently rolling rather than the steep ridges of other chimp forests, so this is brisk walking, and the trek runs around three hours with one hour with the community once found. In the afternoon, Bigodi Wetland Sanctuary just outside the park, community managed with revenue funding local schools and healthcare, holding eight primate species and around 138 birds, the great blue turaco chief among them. Sitatunga, otter and bush pig use the swamp, and the boardwalk makes for easy walking after the morning.

South out of the forest and down onto the plains, only two to three hours, the easiest transfer of the trip. The country opens as you drop and the Rwenzori range stands to the west when the cloud lifts. Queen Elizabeth covers roughly 1,978 square kilometres and was named after Queen Elizabeth II in 1954, holding around 95 mammal species and over 600 birds, the longest bird list of any protected area in Uganda. We check you in on the Mweya peninsula, take lunch, then head out for the Kazinga Channel boat cruise. The channel runs about 32 kilometres between Lake George and Lake Edward, and the two hour trip passes one of the densest hippo populations in Africa, crocodiles hauled out on the mud, elephant and buffalo drinking, and waterbirds along the banks in numbers that surprise people who thought they had seen enough birds already.

Out at six for the Kasenyi plains, open grassland dotted with candelabra euphorbia and the best lion ground in the northern part of the park. Uganda kob graze here in large concentrations and the lions follow them, with elephant, buffalo, waterbuck and hyena filling out the morning. Then we drive out of the park the interesting way, through the remote Ishasha sector rather than around the outside. Lions here habitually climb trees and drape themselves along the branches of large fig and acacia through the heat of the day, behaviour seen regularly in only a handful of places on earth, and the males carry dark manes. Nobody can promise you one and our guides will say so. Picnic lunch among the figs, then south into the hills, the country climbing and greening as you go. Total driving time runs six to seven hours including both game drives, which is a long day and worth knowing about. Bwindi in the late afternoon.

Breakfast early, then to the sector briefing station for half past seven. Uganda Wildlife Authority rangers go through the rules and split everyone into groups of eight trekkers per gorilla family: keep the minimum distance, which Uganda’s guidance now sets at around ten metres, no flash, no eating in their presence, voices low, and nobody treks with a cold. Trackers went out at first light and are already sitting with the families. Then into the forest, which is harder walking than most people expect, a constant sequence of steep ridges and deep valleys with rangers cutting through the tangle ahead of you. Treks run from one to six hours. Bwindi covers about 331 square kilometres, has been continuously forested for something like 25,000 years and shelters roughly 459 mountain gorillas, close to half the world population. When you reach the family, one hour. Hire a porter.

A slower morning before the border. The Batwa lived in this forest as hunter gatherers for thousands of years and were moved out when the park was gazetted in 1991. The Batwa cultural walk is led by Batwa guides who demonstrate hunting techniques, fire making, medicinal plant use and shelter building, and who talk about life inside the forest and what changed afterwards. It is informative and it is not a comfortable story, which is as it should be. Afterwards we take the road south to the Cyanika or Katuna border, our guide handling the vehicle paperwork and walking you through immigration, then on through the Rwandan hills to Kigali. Total driving time runs four to five hours including the crossing, against about ten back to Entebbe, which is why we finish on this side. Drop off at the airport for an evening flight, or at your hotel if you are staying on in Kigali.