About Nkuringo Safaris
A Ugandan-owned, woman-led safari company built on community partnerships, local expertise, and care for the wild places we share.
Since 2007 • Ugandan-owned & woman-led • Licensed DMC (UTB) • Members of AUTO, ATTA, UCF • 5-Star Traveller Reviews
Nkuringo Safaris is a locally owned destination management company and lodge operator designing private gorilla trekking, primate, and wildlife safaris across Uganda and Rwanda, with bespoke extensions into Kenya and Tanzania. From our base in Entebbe, our in-house team secures your gorilla permits, coordinates every transfer, and aligns our eco-lodges and partners, so your journey through East Africa feels precise, unhurried, and personal. Travellers choose Nkuringo because the people you speak to are the people on the ground: the planners, guides, and hosts who have spent years walking these forests and roads themselves.
Mission
Our mission is to deliver safaris that connect people with wildlife, wild places, and culture through thoughtful guiding, responsible hospitality, and travel that supports conservation and community livelihoods.
Talk directly with our Entebbe-based team.
Our Story
Our Journey Began in the Misty Hills of Bwindi
The Nkuringo story begins in 2007, in a tiny hillside camp on the southern edge of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. Travellers came searching for gorillas; local guides knew the valleys, ridges, and village paths by heart. From those early walks grew Nkuringo Walking Safaris—a simple idea that a safari should be felt on foot, shared with communities, and grounded in respect for the forest.
That camp became Nkuringo Gorilla Lodge, a multi-award-winning eco-retreat built with local hands and shaped by the same families who still welcome guests today. The journey stretched north to Papyrus Guesthouse in Entebbe and soon to Mirima Kibale Lodge by Lake Nyamirima, completing a lodge circuit created for primate and highland adventures.
At the heart of this evolution is Lydia Eva Mpanga, co-founder and CEO, who has guided Nkuringo into a recognised, woman-led Ugandan DMC without losing sight of where it began.
"On those first misty mornings in Nkuringo, porters gathered at the trail, neighbours brought stories and bananas, and a promise was made: every journey we organise would honour the forest and the people who live beside it."
Today, that promise runs through every itinerary we design—slower routes, more time on the ground, handpicked guides, and journeys that leave something good behind in the places you visit.
How We Work
What Makes a Nkuringo Safaris Different
Every safari we design begins with a simple idea: travel should feel effortless for you and meaningful for the places it touches.
After eighteen years crafting journeys through Uganda and Rwanda, we’ve learned that excellence hides in the quiet details — the gorilla permit secured weeks ahead, the right guide matched to your pace, the early call ensuring a child’s meal is waiting after a long drive.
At Nkuringo Safaris Uganda, those details never leave our hands.
Behind every itinerary is a quiet team balancing logistics, ethics, and guest experience — the unseen coordination that makes a safari feel effortless. It’s why many guests return, bringing friends and family to meet the guides who once led them through the mist.
Our Modern Operations Hub
Precision Behind Every Safari
Every smooth journey begins long before your flight lands in Entebbe. From our purpose-built operations headquarters, the Nkuringo team plans, tracks, and supports each safari we run across Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania.
Our Entebbe Headquarters
Since 2025, Nkuringo Safaris has worked from a privately owned office complex near Papyrus Guesthouse Entebbe, bringing all core teams under one roof.
The building houses our travel consultants, reservations, accounts, logistics, and leadership offices, along with a conference room, guest reception, staff lounge, car park, and supply stores for field operations.
Guests passing through Entebbe are welcome to stop in, put faces to names, and see where their trip is coordinated.
Fleet & Workshop
In the courtyard, our own fleet of 4x4 Land Cruisers and safari vans is maintained in an on-site workshop by Nkuringo mechanics. Vehicles are fitted for long-distance travel and rough terrain, checked before departure, and assigned to our full-time, UWA-licensed driver-guides.
Because the fleet, workshop, and guiding team sit inside one operation, route changes, delays, and field issues are handled directly rather than through third-party brokers.
The Entebbe hub keeps planners, guides, vehicles, and lodges working off the same plan. If conditions change on the road, the team at base can respond quickly, with the information and tools to adjust. For travellers, that setup shows up simply as a trip that runs cleanly in the background.
Our Lodges
Comfort With Purpose
The Lodges That Carry Our Story
Our lodges extend your safari story into the quiet hours. Each was built by Ugandan hands using local materials and thoughtful design, turning hospitality into a form of stewardship. Together they form a small circuit that carries guests from Entebbe’s gardens to Bwindi’s forest ridges and onward toward Kibale’s crater lakes — a journey stitched together by comfort, craft, and care for place.
Nkuringo Gorilla Lodge — At the Edge of the Impenetrable
At 2,161 metres above sea level, our flagship eco-lodge in Bwindi, Uganda, looks across the Virunga Volcanoes and the clouded canopy of the Impenetrable Forest. The stone cottages were hand-built by Nkuringo artisans from volcanic rock and eucalyptus, each opening onto a terrace above the valley.
Guests wake to birdsong, trek into the forest to meet gorillas, and return to fireside dinners sourced from nearby gardens.
Every stay supports porter livelihoods, women’s cooperatives, and reforestation through the Gorilla Junction Foundation.
Papyrus Guesthouse Entebbe — First Welcome, Last Farewell
A few minutes from Entebbe International Airport, Papyrus Guesthouse offers leafy courtyards, shaded verandas, and staff who remember your name. It’s the soft bridge between long flights and wild places — where travellers meet our Entebbe operations team, unwind in garden rooms, and taste produce grown by nearby farmers.
Built and managed by the same Nkuringo family, Papyrus keeps your first and last night in Uganda as personal as the days in between.
Mirima Kibale Lodge — Rising Beside Lake Nyamirima (Opening June 2026)
Beside the blue waters of Lake Nyamirima near Kibale National Park, our newest eco-lodge is taking shape with local engineers and craftsmen. Designed to sit lightly on the crater rim, it will use solar power, rainwater harvesting, and natural ventilation.
When it opens, Mirima will complete Nkuringo’s primate circuit — linking gorilla, chimpanzee, and golden-monkey habitats within one conservation-driven journey.
Wherever you stay within the Nkuringo Lodges Collection, you’ll find a continuity of intent — architecture rooted in place, hospitality shaped by community, and the quiet feeling that your comfort contributes to something lasting.
Positive Impact
Together For Conservation & Community
Travel That Strengthens People & Places
Nkuringo was built in a village that lives face-to-face with a forest of global importance. You cannot work in Bwindi and pretend conservation and community are separate topics. Through our daily operations and the Gorilla Junction Foundation, we invest in the people and landscapes that make these journeys possible.
Gorilla Junction Foundation & Community Partners
The Gorilla Junction Foundation is our formal commitment to skills, livelihoods, and environmental care in the Bwindi region. A portion of our earnings and guest contributions funds:
Skills training for women and youth in guiding, hospitality, crafts, and small business.
Enterprise support for local farmers, tailors, and artisans supplying our lodges.
Education & scholarships for children from low-income families.
Tree-planting and waste initiatives around Nkuringo and nearby communities.
The faces you see on the trail, at the crafts bench, or in the kitchen are part of a wider circle of families who gain directly when travellers choose Nkuringo.
Conservation in Daily Operations
We focus on what we can control.
At Nkuringo Gorilla Lodge and Papyrus Guesthouse, that means:
Solar and low-energy systems where viable.
Careful water use and greywater recycling for gardens.
Sourcing food and supplies from nearby farmers and cooperatives.
Minimising single-use plastics and encouraging refill culture.
For new builds like Mirima Kibale Lodge, designs follow the same principles: small footprint, local materials, and long-term stewardship over quick gain.
Our Gorilla Junction Foundation and industry memberships help keep these efforts accountable to recognised standards rather than marketing language.
Guides, Employment & Women in Leadership
Impact at Nkuringo is also about who holds the keys.
Our walking guides are trained, salaried, and proudly local — many have grown with us from the early Nkuringo Walking Safaris days.
Our driver-guides act as field trip managers: they host, interpret, coordinate timings, handle issues on the road, and work closely with park rangers. Some bring former ranger or long-term guiding experience into our team, which shows in how they manage sensitive ecosystems and guest expectations.
Across operations in Entebbe and Bwindi, we maintain roughly a 70/30 ratio of women to men, with women in key leadership, finance, operations, and product roles — a natural extension of being a woman-led company, not a box-ticking exercise.
Choosing Nkuringo means your itinerary is mapped by people who live with the outcomes — in the villages, in the forests, in the offices that support them. The return on your travel is measured not only in sightings and photographs, but in skills learned, trees in the ground, and families with more options than they had before.
Our People
The Team Behind Every Journey
What guests remember most about Nkuringo isn’t a view or a photo — it’s a person. The driver-guide who taught them to read elephant tracks, the chef who slipped a birthday cake onto a forest ridge, the planner who met them at Papyrus with a knowing smile. The work here is personal by design.
Names and faces change across forests and offices, but the ethic is constant: do the work carefully, treat guests and colleagues with respect, and let kindness set the tone.
Trust & Recognition
Trusted by Travellers, Respected by Partners
Building trust in East African travel has taken patience and consistency — not promises. Over the years, Nkuringo has earned its reputation through reliable service, transparent operations, and partnerships that hold us to measurable standards.
Professional Memberships & Standards
Nkuringo Safaris is a fully licensed Ugandan Destination Management Company (UTB Licence No. UTB/RTT/TO/2019/00142), recognised by the Association of Uganda Tour Operators (AUTO), Uganda Tourism Board (UTB), Uganda Community Tourism Association (UCOTA), ATTA – African Travel & Tourism Association, and UCF for responsible tourism.
Each partnership keeps our work aligned with clear national and international expectations — safety, ethics, and sustainability, audited by peers in the industry.
Partnerships for Conservation
We work closely with the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) and community conservation groups around Bwindi and Kibale to ensure trekking and park access follow the highest conservation standards. A portion of every permit and safari supports wildlife protection and community programs at the forest edge.
Since 2007, we’ve measured trust not in awards but in reliability — a permit delivered on time, a vehicle ready at dawn, a guide who keeps their promise. That’s the quiet reputation Nkuringo carries today.
