8-Day Uganda Gorilla & Chimp Safari

Your Saringi representative meets you at Entebbe International Airport and drives you the short distance to your hotel on the Lake Victoria shore. We base you in Entebbe rather than Kampala because it is 10–15 minutes from the airport, away from the capital's traffic, and sits closer to tomorrow's flight. In the evening your guide walks you through the week, confirms your permits and checks your trekking kit: waterproof jacket, gardening gloves, gaiters and broken-in boots. If you land early, Entebbe Botanical Gardens or the Uganda Wildlife Conservation Education Centre make a gentle first afternoon.

Take the morning scheduled flight to Kasese, about one hour. Your guide meets you there for the two-hour drive north to Kibale, with the Rwenzori Mountains on your left when the cloud lifts. By road the same journey is a full 6–7-hour day via Mubende and Fort Portal. The flight costs more, but it gives you the afternoon back. After lunch, walk the Bigodi Wetland Sanctuary just outside the park. This community-run swamp trail is known for red colobus, grey-cheeked mangabeys and the great blue turaco, and its fees go back into Bigodi village. It is an easy first look at the forest's primates before tomorrow.

An early start for the 8am briefing at Kanyanchu, where the habituated chimp communities are tracked. Small groups follow a Uganda Wildlife Authority ranger into the forest. Finding the chimps usually takes 2–4 hours. Once you reach them, you have one hour as they feed, call and drum on the buttress roots of the fig trees. Guests staying at Kyaninga leave about an hour earlier to make the briefing. The afternoon is yours. You can rest at the lodge or walk the crater lakes around Fort Portal. If one hour with chimps won't be enough, ask us about the Chimpanzee Habituation Experience. It replaces the standard trek with most of a day alongside the researchers and habituators. Daily places are very limited, so it needs booking months ahead.

Drive south for about three hours through tea estates and down the Albertine Rift escarpment, crossing the Equator, into Queen Elizabeth National Park. You arrive in time for lunch near the Kazinga Channel. In the afternoon, take the two-hour launch along the Kazinga Channel, the 32 km waterway linking Lakes George and Edward. We schedule it for the afternoon because that is when elephants and buffalo come down to drink. The banks hold one of Africa's densest hippo populations, along with Nile crocodiles, fish eagles and pied kingfishers.

Leave at first light for the Kasenyi Plains. Uganda kob gather here on their breeding grounds, and the park's lions hunt them in the cool of the morning. Dawn matters: by mid-morning the cats are lying flat in the grass and much harder to find. Expect elephant herds, buffalo and warthog along the crater tracks on the way back for brunch. In the afternoon, choose between two options. The first is the Katwe salt lake, still worked by hand as it has been for centuries. The second is a walk into Kyambura Gorge, a sunken forest cut into the savannah that is home to a small chimp community. Kyambura is a good second chance if the Kibale chimps were shy, but sightings there are less reliable, and the permit is extra.

This is the long day of the safari, and it is worth it. After an early breakfast, drive two to three hours to the Ishasha sector in the park's remote south, game viewing on the way. Ishasha is one of the few places in Africa where lions regularly rest in the branches of fig and acacia trees. Your guide checks the known trees along the Ishasha River. Sightings are likely but never guaranteed, because the lions move with the kob herds and the weather. After a picnic lunch by the river, which forms the border with the DR Congo, continue two to three hours on dirt roads to Buhoma in northern Bwindi. You arrive in the late afternoon for an early dinner and time to pack your daypack for tomorrow.

This is the reason for the journey. Report early to the Buhoma park office for the ranger briefing. You are assigned to one of the habituated gorilla families, in a group of no more than eight. Treks take anywhere from one to six hours, depending on where the family nested the night before. The slopes are steep, muddy and tangled with vines. Porters wait at the trailhead and we recommend hiring one: they carry your pack, steady you on the climbs, and the wage goes straight to local families. When the trackers find the family, you spend one hour with them, often within a few metres of a silverback, mothers and infants. Most guests come back muddy and quietly emotional. In the afternoon, an optional Buhoma community walk shows life on the forest edge, including Batwa heritage.

After breakfast, drive about an hour to Kihihi airstrip for the scheduled flight to Entebbe. You arrive in the early afternoon with comfortable time for evening international departures. Your Saringi representative meets you in Entebbe for the airport transfer, and we can arrange a day room if your flight is late. By road, the return takes 9–10 hours. That means leaving Bwindi at dawn, and it only suits late-night flights, so we plan it that way only on request.