8 Days Uganda Safari

DAY 01: Entebbe

Hello and welcome to Uganda! Make your acquaintance with our representative who’ll be at the airport to assist you and make all the necessary arrangements for you to get to your hotel. Choose to snooze or get your bearings around the neighbourhood until 6 pm when you catch up with your tour Leader.

DAY 02: Kibale Forest National Park

Get up and ready for your first morning in Uganda by downing some breakfast and then psyching yourself up for an approximate 7 hours drive to the Kibale Forest National Park – a journey that’s interspersed with stops for shutterbugs as you thread your way through rolling hills of green, tea plantations and quintessential Ugandan settlements where both dry and verdant colours meet. Sway into the easy rhythms of the National Park when you get there and relax upon reaching your accommodation-tomorrow is a busy day!

DAY 03: Kibale Forest National Park

Trundle through the wooden boardwalk that splits the forest on either side and crane your neck at all angles as you try and locate some of the most famous inhabitants of the Bigodi Swamp – various species of monkeys, the omnipresent baboons, and its birds amongst which the Blue Turaco stands prized. Together with these inhabitants, learn how the lives of humans here are meshed in with their environment and how they’ve learned to co-exist harmoniously with each other. Skirting the edges of the swamp, top your walk off by sitting down for some traditional fare at Tinka’s homestead, run by one of the locals. Later in the afternoon take a walk to the Kanyachu Tourist Centre, taking time to occasionally glance at where you’re going, although that’s admittedly is a hard act to follow when you’re tracking a group of chimpanzees!

DAY 04: Queen Elizabeth National Park

Hot on the heels of an early breakfast, drive through the wildlife corridor that creates a link between the Kibale Forest and the Queen Elizabeth National Park. Upon reaching the park, jump onto your 4-wheel drives and go on a hunt for the best that the Ugandan savannah has to offer. Catch the changing moods of a buffalo herd as they lift their noses nervously to the wind or watch a pride of lions lying nonchalantly, perhaps even yawning unconcernedly at your passage while elephants lumber stolidly and an occasional leopard leaps onto the gnarled branches of an acacia to complete the landscape. Head back for lunch after your day out in the grassland and follow it up with a boat ride down the Kazinga channel to get a piece of the three giants – hippos, elephants and buffaloes – as they wallow in the shallow banks of the channel. Keep a lookout for the herons catching a ride on the expansive backs of the hippos as well as the skimmers, redshanks and other variety of water birds that fringe the waters edge.

Day 05: Bwindi Impenetrable National Park

Leave the confines of your bed for an early start this morning. Launch yourself into another game drive, this time traversing the Ishasha sector of the National Park to observe lions that have an unusual penchant for reclining on trees a la their smaller kin – the reclusive leopard. Get into the “who’s watching who?” mode as you gaze at these wonderful beasts in their unique circumstance but don’t forget to tear your eyes away from the sycamore and acacia branches to look at the other residents of the park – the antelopes, buffaloes and elephants. Later in the afternoon, make your way to the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, your home for the night.

DAY 06: Bwindi Impenetrable National Park

With breakfast firmly under your belt and a packed lunch tucked away in your backpack, make for the park headquarters where you’ll be assigned a mountain gorilla family to track. Mark your way through the trails bordered by rainforests and thick undergrowth that sustains life consisting of more than 400 species of plant and approximately half that number of butterflies. Listen to the sounds of the forests and peer through the mist that hangs over distant hills and when you finally come upon the Gorilla troop, take time to soak up an experience that is as emotional as it is privileged; these are the last of a tiny population left in the world.

Day 07: Lake Mburo National Park

It’s time to leave Bwindi and head northeast for Lake Mburo National Park this morning. An approximate travel time of 7 hours – lunch and COVID -19 Test (at the time of writing) included – will see you unlocking the doors of your lodge and then setting off for a game drive in the evening. Watch the hint of dusk settle itself upon the park and its many residents, the most famous being the impala, zebras, the endangered Rothschild Giraffes, eland antelopes and the usual suspects. If you have a rabbit’s foot, hang on to it – the nocturne landscape might throw up a leopard or two!

DAY 08: Lake Mburo National Park Guided Nature Walk

Wake up for one final early morning of your tour and unshackle yourself from the game drive experience. Get closer to the ground this time – literally – as you set off on a guided nature walk. Explore a bit more of the national park, startling some barbets, lapwings and snipe in your wake. Steal closer, at eye level, to the zebras, elands and impalas before you say your last hurrahs and then return for breakfast. Check out of your accommodation soon after and then drive to Entebbe where you’ll have day rooms booked for your usage until such time that you head for the airport.