8-Day Uganda Big Five Safari with Chimpanzee and Gorilla Tracking

• You will arrive at the airport, be warmly welcomed by a representative, and transferred to your hotel in Kampala.

Optional activities:

• City tour: Depending on the time of your arrival, you will explore the vibrant and chaotic city of Kampala. You will discover historical and political sites, including the ancient tombs of the Kabakas, where the Buganda people laid their kings to rest, or the Bahai Temple.
• Eat out: Kampala is a town full of culinary wonders. You can head out from your hotel to taste some of the eclectic cuisine of the region, including Kampala's delicious Indian food.

Accommodation: Latitude 0 (Luxury hotel in Kampala)

Journey time: 1 hour.

• Today, after an early breakfast, your guide will come to your hotel to brief you about the safari and transfer you to Fort Portal, close to Kibale National Park. The drive is incredibly scenic, passing through villages, lush green forests, and hills dotted with tea plantations.
• You will stay at a wonderful lodge just outside Fort Portal town, with spacious rooms and amazing views over one of the crater lakes in this area.

Accommodation: Kyaninga Lodge (Luxury lodge)

Journey time: 5 hours.

• Today, you will wake up early and head to the park offices for a briefing about your chimpanzee tracking experience. Kibale Forest National Park boasts the highest number of primate species in the world, including chimpanzees. Approximately 5,000 chimpanzees live in the wild in Uganda, making it a perfect place to see them.
• An experienced ranger will take you chimp tracking in the morning or afternoon, and you might also see other monkey species that live here. Once you locate the chimpanzees, you will have a full hour of eye-to-eye contact with them. Since they are wild animals, sightings can never be guaranteed, and you may have to settle for hearing their hoots and hollers.
• In the afternoon, after lunch, you will go for the guided swamp walk. The 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.

Accommodation: Kyaninga Lodge, Fort Portal (Luxury Lodge)

• After breakfast, your guide will drive you to Queen Elizabeth National Park, home to a high concentration of Uganda's mammals, including tree-climbing and savannah lions, elephants, warthogs, Uganda kobs, waterbucks, Cape buffaloes, hippos, and leopards. There are also more than 600 species of birds, including the African spoonbill, pied kingfishers, fish eagles, pelicans, and vultures.
• 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. Lions are often sighted both in and at the entrance to the park.
• Be ready to see huge numbers of hippos and elephants, and keep your eyes open for a leopard lazing in the sunshine.
• In the late afternoon, you will relax at the lodge. Your overnight stay will be at the beautiful bush lodge (banda), located inside Queen Elizabeth National Park.

Accommodation: The Bush Lodge (Banda), Mid-range banda located just outside Queen Elizabeth NP

• Today, you will wake up early. A little before sunrise, coffee, tea, and doughnuts will be served in the lounge before you 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, buffalo, lions, waterbucks, leopards, Uganda kobs, and many warthogs.
• A well-deserved brunch will be served back at the lodge late in the 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 - more than you can possibly imagine - as well as a variety of other animals that come to the waterhole to drink or bathe. You can expect to see buffaloes, crocodiles, bathing elephants, and a range of beautiful birds. This will undoubtedly be one of the highlights of your tour.

Accommodation: The Bush Lodge (Banda)

Mid-range banda located just outside Queen Elizabeth NP

• After breakfast, you will proceed to the southern part of Queen Elizabeth National Park, the famous Ishasha area, for a game drive in search of the tree-climbing lions.
• Ishasha is home to the famous tree-climbing lions. While lion cubs around the world frequently climb trees for fun, adults rarely do. The adult lions in Ishasha are an exception. It is thought that they sit in the branches to get away from the tsetse flies and enjoy a cool breeze. If you are lucky, you might spot a few during your game drive. Lunch will be served at Ishasha Wilderness Camp in Ishasha.
• After lunch, you will be transferred to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, home to mountain gorillas. You will arrive in time for dinner and your overnight stay.

Accommodation: Mahogany Springs Lodge

Luxury lodge bordering Bwindi NP without fences

• Today, after an early breakfast, you will be transferred to the park headquarters for a briefing about gorilla tracking. You will encounter one of Bwindi's endangered mountain gorillas. For most people, this is the absolute highlight of their tour in Uganda. Bwindi Impenetrable National Park boasts both mountain gorillas and chimpanzees, the only forest in Africa that can make this claim. It also hosts five other species of primates, 113 species of mammals, over 200 species of butterflies, and 360 species of birds. The gorillas you track are habituated and can tolerate the presence of humans for a brief period each day.
• The time taken to track the gorillas can be as little as 2 hours or as much 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.

Accommodation: Mahogany Springs Lodge

Luxury lodge bordering Bwindi NP without fences

• After breakfast at the lodge, you will drive back to Entebbe Airport. As you pass through the equator, there will be a stop for the requisite snapshot and a bit of souvenir shopping.