Uganda Safari Planning Guide: Gorillas and Big Game

Most of Africa asks you to choose: forests and primates in one country, plains game in another. Uganda holds both, and holds them close enough together that a single trip can take in gorillas in a misty rainforest one morning and lion on open savanna two days later.

The forests of the southwest, Bwindi above all, shelter roughly half the world’s remaining mountain gorillas. Kibale, further north, holds one of the densest chimpanzee populations in East Africa. Between and beyond them sit the savanna parks, Queen Elizabeth and Murchison Falls, where the game viewing is genuine rather than a consolation to the trekking.

Uganda is also quieter than its better-known neighbours. Gorilla permits are capped at a fixed number a day, and the savanna parks see a fraction of the vehicles that gather in the Maasai Mara or the Serengeti. You pay for that space in effort rather than in crowds, which suits the way I like to travel and the people I tend to travel with.

The trade is honest and worth stating. The roads between the parks are poor, so I move you by light aircraft rather than spend your holiday in a vehicle on corrugated dirt. It costs more than driving, and it gives you back two or three days you would otherwise lose to the road. It is the same calculation that shapes a Botswana safari, where the distances are greater still.

Two forest treks account for most of why people come to Uganda, and they are different enough to plan separately. One is the reason the country is on your list at all; the other is the one that surprises people by how much they enjoy it.

Bwindi is where you trek mountain gorillas, and it is the anchor most Uganda trips are built around. The forest is steep, wet and, in places, genuinely impenetrable, and the trek to a habituated family can take from under an hour to most of a morning, depending on where the group has moved. The hour you spend with them once you arrive is fixed, close, and unlike anything a vehicle sighting offers.

The park is trekked from several sectors, Buhoma, Ruhija, Rushaga and Nkuringo among them, and they differ in terrain and in how hard the walking is. I match the sector to your fitness and to the permits available, rather than sending everyone to the same trailhead. Porters are on hand to carry packs and, on the steeper ground, to help you up it.

Permits are limited and sell out for the busy months, so I secure them well ahead and build the rest of the trip around the day you are booked to trek. A permit is for one day with one family, and it is not refundable, which is why the sequence of the whole itinerary is set by it.

Suggested stay: 2 to 3 nights, enough for a full trekking day with a margin around it.

Kibale holds one of the strongest chimpanzee populations in East Africa, and the tracking here carries among the best odds of a close encounter anywhere on the continent. The walking is far gentler than Bwindi, on flatter forest paths, which makes it the more relaxed of the two treks.

A morning tracks the chimps; an afternoon is well spent on the Bigodi wetland walk nearby, which is quietly one of the better birding hours in the country. Kibale sits naturally at the start of a westward route, before the savanna parks, rather than as a detour.

Suggested stay: 2 nights, enough for the chimp trek and the wetland without rushing either.

The part people underestimate is the savanna. Between the forests, Uganda runs two large game parks where the safari is the real thing, not a filler between treks, and where much of the Big Five is on the cards.

Queen Elizabeth is Uganda’s most varied park, and the one I lean on for classic game viewing. Its Ishasha sector is known for lion that rest up in the fig trees, a habit you will not reliably find elsewhere, and the Kazinga Channel between two lakes carries one of the densest gatherings of hippo and waterbirds anywhere, best seen from a boat in the afternoon.

Lion, elephant and buffalo are all here, with leopard for the patient. Rhino are the missing piece: there are none in the park, or anywhere wild in Uganda, so a full Big Five means adding the rhino sanctuary at Ziwa on the road north, which I can build in for those who want the set complete. For chimps without the full Kibale detour, the Kyambura Gorge inside the park offers a shorter, less certain tracking option.

Suggested stay: 2 to 3 nights, enough for a channel cruise and game drives in more than one sector.

Murchison is Uganda’s largest park, built around the point where the Nile is forced through a narrow gap in the rock before dropping into the gorge below. The boat runs upstream to the base of the falls, past hippo, crocodile and elephant on the banks, and the walk to the top looks down on the full weight of it.

The game viewing on the northern plains is strong: elephant, buffalo, lion and giraffe, with the Nile delta downstream a rewarding stretch for waterbirds. It is a longer hop from the southwest, which is exactly why the aircraft earns its place.

Suggested stay: 3 nights, enough to justify the flight and give the river and the plains their due.

Two quieter options round a Uganda trip off, depending on whether you want a last burst of energy or a soft landing before the flight home.

Jinja sits at the source of the Nile and is Uganda’s adventure town, a mini Victoria Falls in spirit. The white-water rafting runs real Grade 5 rapids, and there is bungee jumping over the river, quad biking, kayaking and horse riding for those who want them. It is a lively, active way to finish, and it suits travellers who would rather end on adrenaline than on a final game drive.

Lake Mburo is the small one, and I use it mostly as a calm overnight rather than a destination in its own right. It has no big cats to speak of, which is precisely why it allows walking safaris and horse riding among zebra, impala and eland on foot. Most guests take a single night here on the way back towards Entebbe, though many simply fly straight back to the capital instead. Either works, and I will tell you which suits your routing.

The short answer is one of the two dry seasons, when the forest trails are firmer underfoot and the savanna game draws to water. The longer answer is that Uganda has no truly bad time, only trades between cost, crowds and mud.

How many days do you need for a Uganda safari? It depends on how much you take in, but each area has a minimum below which its rhythm never settles, and because the hops between them go by air, cutting a night rarely saves what it costs in a wasted flight. As a rule:

A trip taking in the two treks and one savanna park sits comfortably at 7 to 8 nights; adding the second savanna park brings it to 9 or 10.

For how those nights come together into a trip, and the order I run the forests and the plains in, see the three Uganda routes I build most.

How much a Uganda safari costs comes down to a few structural pieces: the trekking permits, the lodges, the guiding and vehicle, the light-aircraft hops between parks, and park fees. I fold all of them, permits included, into a single per-person price, rather than quoting a low rate and leaving the permit as a surprise.

A day in Uganda takes one of two shapes, depending on where you are. In the forests, the morning is the trek: an early briefing, then as long as it takes to find the family, and a fixed hour with them before the walk back. The afternoon is yours, for the wetland walk, the birds, or simply the veranda.

On the savanna the rhythm is the familiar one: an early game drive while it is cool, the middle of the day at rest, and a second drive or a boat cruise into the late afternoon. The two rhythms sit well back to back, and part of how I sequence a trip is making sure a hard trekking day is followed by a gentler one rather than another start before dawn.

Guiding on a Uganda trip works one of two ways, and I use whichever suits the route and the party rather than treating either as the standard. The difference is who leads your days, not how good the guiding is.

With lodge-based guiding, the guides employed by each lodge lead the game drives, boat cruises and forest treks, on vehicles shared with other guests at the property. Uganda’s guides are strong, many of them having worked the same parks and forests for years. In the quieter savanna parks, and on the treks, where the permit caps the group whoever you travel with, a shared vehicle rarely costs you the sighting. It keeps the cost down, and the saving often buys an extra night or a better-placed lodge.

Private guiding on a Uganda trip means me. I meet you at the airport when you land, travel with you throughout, and stay with you until you fly home. You have a dedicated vehicle and a single guide and host for the whole safari, which removes the handovers between camps and lets the days follow you rather than a fixed schedule. On the gorilla and chimpanzee treks the park’s own rangers lead the way into the forest, as they must for every visitor; the rest of the trip, the game drives, the planning and the days in between, is mine. It suits photographers, families shaping days around children, and anyone who would rather the trip bent to them.

A handful of questions come up in almost every enquiry before anyone books Uganda. Here is how I answer them, the way I would on a call rather than in a brochure.

Planning a Uganda safari starts with a conversation about when you would travel, who is coming, and whether the gorillas are the whole point or one part of a longer trip. Tell me roughly what you have in mind and I will come back with an honest shape to react to, and if it helps to see how these trips have felt for past guests, you can read a few of their reflections first.