Classic Uganda Primates & Wildlife Safari Holiday

Our driver will pick you up from Entebbe International Airport (15 minutes) and check you in at your hotel within Entebbe. You'll meet with your trip specialist for a briefing just before dinner.

Otherwise, there are optional activities around Entebbe for those who arrive early and want to stay active. For example, bird-watchers can visit the world-renowned botanical gardens or Mabamba swamps to meet the prehistoric shoebill. You can take a quiet walk to the local markets or shop at the modern malls.

You'll stay at: Boutique Hotel Number 5 (Luxury) or Papyrus Guesthouse (Comfortable)

Enjoy an early breakfast, then journey to Western Uganda across the beautiful landscape of central Uganda with vast cultivated plains, banana plantations, and cattle farms. Briefly stopover en route at Mpambire and watch the making of traditional and local artefacts. The equator stop will be another excellent stop for a few Instagram moments. You’ll arrive in time for lunch at Rwakobo Rock Lodge.

Rwakobo Rock Lodge is a wilderness retreat secluded on a rocky outcrop at the edge of Lake Mburo National Park’s northern border. The lodge provides private getaways in the locally-styled cottages dotted around a massive granite outcrop, with stunning views over the wilderness plains.

After a hearty lunch at the lodge, take a game drive and meet resident favourites like buffalo, impala, zebra, eland, warthogs, and bushbuck. You can also take a one-hour boat safari to find crocodiles, hippos, and plenty of water birds or a horseback safari (not covered in the price.)

Staying at: Rwakobo Rock (mid-range)

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner.

Enjoy an early morning game drive in the park, then continue to Western Uganda across its rolling hills, tea plantations, tropical rainforest, and towards the Virunga Volcanos majestic chain.

You'll drive via Mbarara, Kabale towns before heading onto the 32-km countryside dirt road to Nkuringo Bwindi Gorilla Lodge, on the edge of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.

Keep your eyes out on the rugged Tuscany-like landscapes: the views are to-die-for! On the edge of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, on a magnificent ridge, sits Nkuringo Lodge’s ten luxurious cottages.

The private cottages have a distinctive elegance and surprising luxury amid forest trees, flowers, and shrubs. Locally styled furnishings grace the spacious rooms, and light fills the space from your private viewing deck over the forest swath and beyond the entire Virunga Volcanoes chain.

After settling in, take a stroll around the community, encounter local cultures, and visit the Batwa indigenous tribe who once occupied Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, now a UNESCO world heritage site and gorilla home.

Staying at: Nkuringo Bwindi Gorilla Lodge

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch (packed), and Dinner.

Wake up early to start the Luxury Uganda Gorilla Safari highlight, have your breakfast, and be at the trailhead in time for the gorilla tracking briefing. The Nkuringo trailhead is about a 10-meter walk from Nkuringo Bwindi Gorilla Lodge—our driver can drive you for that distance if you so choose.

The gorilla tracking briefing usually starts at 8:00 am. You’ll be assigned the gorilla group for tracking with six other trekkers and given the general observable rules in the jungle. You’ll be escorted into the African wilderness with two gun-baring rangers (for your security) and a tracker/guide with a machete to lead your way.

The jungle has dump floors and thick shrubs, which will definitely require you have waterproof hiking boots, a rain jacket, a waterproof backpack (it could rain anytime), trousers, long-sleeved and garden gloves. The tracking is at your pace, ask to stop when you want to, and body fitness will be required because it’s a mountainous region. Trekking can take from 30 minutes to 6 hours before you find the gorillas, be prepared for this.

Once you have found the gorillas, you will be allowed to spend an hour with them. Keep your camera silent (no shutter sound of flash photography), observe a 10 meters distance from the gorillas, and keep your mask on. Your time in the forest cannot be pre-determined as every day differs from the previous.

Visit the top of the world in the evening to have a 360 degrees experience of the jungle you just visited. On a clear day, you can see a line of the five volcano mountains, including the Rwenzori mountains, in the far distance.

Staying at: Nkuringo Bwindi Gorilla Lodge

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch (packed), and Dinner.

Our travellers’ favourite and pioneer activity is hiking on the ancient walking trails through the mystic Bwindi jungle, from the Nkuringo south side to the Buhoma visitor centre in the north. At the gates of the forest, the surprised traveller will be forced to forget their city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish, and wrap themselves in the majestic beauties of the ancient jungle.

For 4-5 hours, you’ll be guided by a local expert who’ll furnish you with ancient tales, and incredible forest knowledge and bring you close to being one with the forest trails. If you’re lucky, you’ll meet some wild forest inhabitants like chimps, forest elephants, duikers, forest buffalo, and more.

At the other end of the walking trail, your driver will be ready to whisk you off through Ishasha savannahplains, where he’ll lazily drive for you to catch sight of the incredible tree-climbing lions. You’ll be at Kataara Lodge in time for dinner.

Staying at: Katara Lodge (Mid-range)

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner.

Get chance to reach close to Africa safari’s big game players on an early morning or evening game drive and a boat safari on Kazinga Channel, famous for hosting the largest population of hippos.

While on a game drive on Kasenyi tracks, you will encounter animals like enormous herds of elephants and buffalo. You’ll also spot many interesting antelope species such as Uganda kob, topi, and bushbuck. The giant forest hog is unusually easy to spot. Search around the Kasenyi tracks for the elusive leopard.

On the Kazinga Channel boat safari trip that will set off at 14:00, you’re able to catch sight of elephants, buffalo, waterbuck, Uganda kob, and large hippo pods daily. Keep an eye open for the enormous water monitor lizard, which is common in the riverine scrub, as well as crocodiles. You’ll also see the giant forest hog, leopard, and lion. The odds of seeing predators and other nocturnal creatures coming to drink are highest in the late afternoon.

After the boat launch, your Classic Uganda Primates & Wildlife Safari driver will hit highway with the Rwenzori Mountains backdrop and drive north to Kibale National Park, where you'll spend the next two nights, arriving just in time for dinner.

You'll stay at: Turaco Treetops (Mid-range)
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch (Packed), Dinner

Wake up early and be at the visitor centre by 7:30 am to embark on another primate viewing adventure in Kibale Forest.

Kibale is commonly known for the diversity and density of primates in Africa. Its stands out as the best place to watch chimpanzees up-close in their natural setting, with over 1500 chimpanzees under the park’s rainforest canopy and a dozen other primate species.

On your morning trek to find the chimps, it’s prevalent for other primates to cross your paths, like the rare L’Hoest’s monkey and red colobus monkey. Other primates you may encounter include the black & white colobus, red-tailed monkey, blue monkey, olive baboon, and grey-cheeked mangabey.

However, your primary goal will be to find a troop of human-habituated chimpanzees. Guided by an expert tracker, you’ll head into the jungle in small groups, looking out for tale-tale signs of the chimp’s direction and listening for loud calls.

The experience usually lasts 2 to 6 hours, depending on the location of the habituated chimpanzee troop. Visitors are allowed from 1 hr to almost the whole day with the chimpanzees, and the quality and intimacy of each sighting can vary highly

You'll stay at: Turaco Treetops (Mid-range)
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch (Packed), Dinner

After breakfast, lazily get your bags early in the morning. After breakfast, you’ll drive through the gorgeous Fort Portal country with the fading Rwenzori mountains escorting you out of western Uganda to Entebbe through Kampala.

In Entebbe, you can use our facilities at Papyrus Guest House to freshen up for your international flight back home.

Accommodation for this day is not included, though. But we can book you a room at your discretion.

Accommodation (Optional): Papyrus Guesthouse
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch (packed)