8 Days Primates and Safari
Uganda is all about its friendly people and the diversity in landscapes and activities. This trip will show you the best of what Uganda has to offer. Queen Elizabeth National Park features grassland savannah teeming with wildlife and Bwindi Forest is full of interesting endemic flora and fauna. All of this is on top of all main highlights like gorilla tracking, chimpanzee tracking and boat safaris. And, as with all our tours, you will stay in some of Uganda's very best lodges!
This tour has been designed with your comfort and sense of adventure in mind. From the time you are picked up at the airport, you will have a dedicated car and driver/guide at your disposal to take you to all the exciting places in the programme.
Day 1: Welcome to Uganda!
You will be picked up from the airport and will be transferred to your hotel.
Journey Time: 1 hour
Accommodation: Boma Guesthouse
Meal Plan: No meals are inclusive
Day 2: To Fort Portal/ Kibale Forest
After an early breakfast, we will take you on an incredibly scenic drive, passing through villages, lush green forests and hills, dotted with tea plantations. You will stay at a wonderful lodge, just outside the town of Fort Portal, with spacious rooms and amazing views over one of the crater lakes in this area!
Journey Time: 5 hours
Accommodation: Papaya Lake Lodge
Meal Plan: Breakfast, Dinner
Day 3: Chimpanzee Tracking in Kibale Forest
Kibale Forest National Park boasts the highest number of primate species in the world, including our delightful cousins, the chimpanzees. Today, in Uganda, there are approximately 5,000 chimpanzees in the wild, which makes it a perfect place to spot them!
An experienced forest ranger will take you chimp tracking in the morning or afternoon. En route, you might also see other monkey species that live in this forest. Once the chimps are located, you will spend a full hour with them. Since they are wild animals, we can never guarantee that you will see them. You might have to settle with hearing their hoots and hollers, but the experience is still worthwhile.
Later, the swamp walk (2-3 hours) will take you through grassland, small communities and some beautiful scenery, where the locals are likely to greet you with enthusiastic waves. It is usual to spot three to four different primate species during this walk,
Optional: Chimpanzee Habituation Tracking
You have the opportunity to do the chimpanzee habituation tracking, instead of the regular chimpanzee tracking.
This will take all day and you will be 100% sure to have a very close encounter with your closest relatives. Book this in time because only 6 persons per day are allowed to go. Your swamp walk can be postponed to the next morning.
Journey Time:1 hour each way
Day 4: Queen Elizabeth N.P.
In the morning, you can either relax at your lodge, make a crater lake hike or visit a nearby tea plantation, where you will be able to assist the tea pickers and learn about how leaves are selected for the highest quality. You will then continue your journey to Queen Elizabeth National Park.
Queen Elizabeth National Park is Uganda’s second largest park, located at the base of the majestic Rwenzori Mountain range, adjacent to Lake Edward and Lake George.
The park has prolific game, including Gazelle, Uganda Kob, Warthog and Waterbuck.
You stay overnight at the beautiful Mweya Safari Lodge, located in the heart of Queen Elizabeth National Park on the Mweya peninsula. Watch wildlife from your private verandah and fall asleep to the roaring of lions on the distant savannah. This truly is Africa!
Lions are often sighted both in the park and at the entrance to the park. Be prepared for huge numbers of hippos and elephants and keep your eyes peeled for leopards lazing in the sunshine.
In the late afternoon, you will go for a game drive into the park.
Journey Time: 3.5 hrs
Accommodation, Meal Plan Breakfast, Lunch, dinner
Day 5: Park Game Drive & Boat Safari
Today, you wake up early. A little before sunrise coffee, tea and donuts will be served in the lounge before we head out for a long game drive in time to see the first rays of light. You will search for all the wildlife in the park and are likely to come across elephants, buffalos and lions.
A well-deserved brunch will be served back at the lodge in the late morning.
In the afternoon you will take a boat safari along the Kazinga Channel which joins Lake George and Lake Edward.
Here, you will see a lot of hippos, as well as a variety of other animals which come to the waterhole to drink or bathe. You can expect to see buffalos, crocodiles, bathing elephants and a range of beautiful birds. This will undoubtedly be one of the highlights of your tour.
Optional activity: Lion Tracking
For visitors who yearn to get up close to wild African fauna, a research trip is a rewarding adventure. This new and unique experience allows visitors to actively participate in monitoring some of the lions in the park, using locator devices and learning habituation calls, as well as monitoring weather, surroundings and behaviour.
The results are added to researchers’ databases, contributing valuable information to the overall understanding of wildlife ecology - and helping to conserve this wonderful ecosystem. This will as well gives you a 95% chance to see the lions!
The number of people on each outing is limited in order to reduce stress on the animals and to increase the quality of the experience for visitors.
Experiential tours last between one and three hours. They usually take place in the early morning or evening, or occasionally at night.
Day 6:Tree climbing lions
After breakfast, you will game drive on your way out of the park. Afterwards, you will go to Ishasha where you will look for the tree climbing lions: To escape from the heat during the day, the lions here have learned how to climb the fig trees. If you are lucky you might spot a few during your game drive. Besides these famous lions, there is other interesting wildlife to be seen, like buffalo and the Uganda Kob.
Lunch will be provided at Ishasha Wilderness Camp in Ishasha.
After lunch, you will drive to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, home of the Mountain Gorillas.
Get a good night's sleep because tomorrow you have to be fresh for the Gorilla trekking.
Journey Time: 5 hrs + game drive time
Accommodation: Bwindi Lodge
Meal Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Day 7: Gorilla Tracking in Bwindi Forest
Today is the big day! Prepare yourself for an encounter with one of Bwindi’s gentle giants: the endangered Mountain Gorilla. For most people, this is the absolute highlight of their tour in Uganda.
Bwindi Impenetrable Forest boasts both mountain gorillas and chimpanzees - the only forest in Africa which can make this claim.
It also hosts five other species of primate, 113 species of mammal, over 200 butterflies and 360 birds. The gorillas you track belong to one of nine habituated family groups who can tolerate the presence of humans for a brief period every day.
Your track will be an exciting journey along forested slopes, entwined vines, bushes and bamboo before you eventually reach the Gorilla family.
The time taken to track the Gorillas can be as few as 2 hours to as many as 7 hours.
Once the Gorillas have been located, your group will be allowed a maximum of one hour with them. Coming face-to-face with a mountain gorilla is a truly humbling and emotional experience. This is a fantastic and privileged opportunity to get up close and personal with Uganda’s very own ‘Gorillas in the Mist’.
Accommodation: Bwindi Lodge
Meal Plan: Breakfast, packed lunch & Dinner
Day 8: End of Your Tour - Airport Transfer
After breakfast at the lodge, you will drive back to Kampala or Entebbe (Airport), stopping at the equator for a snapshot and a bit of souvenir shopping.
If you wish to depart tonight from Entebbe Airport, make sure your flight is at 8 pm or later. If you want us to book one (or more) nights in Kampala and/or Entebbe, please let us know.
Journey Time 7-8 hours
Accommodation:Not included
Meal Plan: Breakfast, (packed) Lunch
For more information, please contact us:
Email: info@trek-uganda.com
Phone/WhatsApp: +256775159837
Customizations are possible and always welcomed.
We are looking forward to hearing from you!