5 Day Uganda Gorillas And Chimpanzees Safari

Our driver guide collects you at Entebbe and we head west, out through Kampala and on towards Fort Portal, roughly 320 kilometres over five to six hours with lunch on the way. The country changes steadily, cultivated hills giving way to tea estates, with the Rwenzori range showing on the horizon in clear weather. Nearing Kibale we drop into the crater lake country, dozens of steep sided volcanic craters holding deep green water among banana groves and tea. Kibale protects around 795 square kilometres of moist evergreen rainforest and holds thirteen primate species, the highest density in East Africa, which is why it gets called the primate capital. We check you in near Kanyanchu or on a crater rim and go through tomorrow with you over dinner. One thing worth knowing: Kibale briefs in the morning rather than before dawn, unlike the chimp forests in Rwanda, so tonight is a reasonable one and you will not be leaving in the dark.

To the Kanyanchu visitor centre for the morning briefing, then into the forest with Uganda Wildlife Authority 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. The ground here is gently rolling rather than the steep ridges of other chimp forests, so the walking is brisk rather than punishing, and the whole trek runs around three hours with one hour with the community once they are 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 is the one everybody wants and usually gets.

The transfer day, and we make it earn its keep by driving through a national park rather than around one. South from Kibale towards Queen Elizabeth, then into the remote Ishasha sector for a game drive on the way through. 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, since it depends where the prides are that week, but working the fig trees with a picnic lunch is a good deal better than six hours of tarmac. Topi are common here and scarce elsewhere in the park, along with elephant and buffalo. Total driving time runs six to seven hours including the game drive. We reach Bwindi in the late afternoon and check in near your allocated sector. Pack your daypack tonight.

Breakfast early, then to the sector briefing station for half past seven. Uganda Wildlife Authority rangers cover 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 with the families. Then into the forest, and Bwindi 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 anywhere 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; on this ground it is close to compulsory.

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 genuinely 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, where our guide handles the vehicle paperwork and walks you through immigration, then on through the Rwandan hills to Kigali. Total driving time runs four to five hours including the crossing, which is why we end here rather than back at Entebbe, where the same day would run to ten. Drop off at the airport for an evening flight, or at your hotel if you are staying on. If you would rather finish in Uganda we can route you to Entebbe instead, though it costs you most of a day.