Travel and Tourism in Uganda

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and Mountain Gorilla Trekking

There are wildlife experiences and there are wildlife experiences. Watching elephants at a waterhole in the Serengeti is magnificent. Following a leopard on a night drive in the Sabi Sand is thrilling. Seeing blue whales from a boat in the Pacific is humbling. All of these are extraordinary. None of them, in the judgment of the many experienced wildlife travelers who have done all of them and more, compares to spending an hour with a family of mountain gorillas in the forests of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park covers approximately 331 square kilometers of dense forest in the Kigezi highlands of southwestern Uganda, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. The park is one of Uganda's three UNESCO World Heritage Sites, inscribed in 1994, and it is listed for both its extraordinary biodiversity and for the presence of the mountain gorilla. The forest is ancient, estimated to have survived through the ice ages as a refugium when much of the surrounding landscape was transformed by climate change, which explains why it harbors so many endemic species: over two hundred species of trees, over three hundred and fifty species of birds, over one hundred and twenty species of mammals, and over two hundred species of butterflies.

Mountain gorillas, Gorilla beringei beringei, are one of two subspecies of eastern gorilla and are the most endangered great ape on Earth. The entire global population is divided between two populations: the gorillas of the Virunga Massif, a chain of volcanic mountains shared between Uganda's Mgahinga Gorilla National Park, Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park, and the Democratic Republic of Congo's Virunga National Park, and the gorillas of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. As of the most recent census in 2018, the total mountain gorilla population was 1,063 individuals, of which approximately 459 live in Bwindi. This population increase from approximately 620 individuals in 1989 is one of the most celebrated conservation success stories in the world, achieved through intensive anti-poaching operations, veterinary intervention programs, community benefit-sharing programs funded by tourism revenue, and the genuine commitment of the Ugandan government to protecting the species.

The gorilla trekking experience begins at a designated trailhead in one of Bwindi's four sectors: Buhoma in the north, Ruhija in the east, Rushaga in the south, or Nkuringo in the southwest. Each morning, groups of eight tourists maximum set out with an experienced guide and armed rangers to find the habituated gorilla family allocated to their group. The gorillas have been habituated over years, meaning they have been gradually accustomed to the presence of humans over a period of two years or more of daily visits by researchers and guides, to the point that they ignore the presence of humans and behave normally. There are currently approximately twenty habituated gorilla groups in Bwindi.

The trek itself can take anywhere from thirty minutes to eight or more hours depending on where the gorillas have moved. Trackers set out before dawn to find the group's location, and radio communication guides the trekking party to their position. The terrain in Bwindi is exactly as the name implies: impenetrable. The slopes are steep, often muddy, covered in dense vegetation through which movement requires constant use of hands as well as feet. Guides use machetes to clear a path, but the going is never easy and visitors who arrive in good physical condition and with appropriate expectations have a far better experience than those who underestimate the demands.

When you find the gorillas, everything changes. The forest opens slightly, and there they are. A silverback, the dominant male of the group, may be sitting calmly eating, his enormous back turned toward you, the silver saddle of mature hair that gives him his name catching the dappled forest light. The females move through the vegetation nearby, some carrying infants. Young gorillas, the juveniles between two and six years old, are the group's entertainers: they wrestle with each other, swing from branches, steal food from their elders, and stare at the humans with an expression that contains curiosity in equal measure to indifference. The guide whispers instructions: keep your voice low, keep your distance of at least seven meters unless the gorillas choose to approach you, do not look directly at the silverback for extended periods as this can be perceived as a challenge.

The hour you are allowed with the gorillas passes faster than any hour you have ever experienced. The gorillas are so overwhelmingly familiar, so obviously close to human, that the encounter produces a disorientation that is difficult to describe. You are looking at a face that is not human but shares something essential with the human. The eyes have the same liquid depth, the same capacity for expression, the same suggestion of a complex inner life that you see when you look another person in the eyes. When a young gorilla approaches you, reaches out, and touches your boot with one black hand before being recalled by an adult, the sensation that runs through you is not fear or excitement but something more fundamental: a recognition, a moment of contact between species that collapses the apparent distance between the human and the natural world.

The gorilla trekking permit costs seven hundred US dollars per person and must be booked in advance through the Uganda Wildlife Authority or through licensed tour operators. This is not a modest sum. It is, however, one of the most directly effective conservation payments in the world. Eighty percent of the permit fee goes to the Uganda Wildlife Authority for park management and anti-poaching operations. Twenty percent goes to local communities through the Revenue Sharing Program, funding schools, clinics, and infrastructure in the villages surrounding the park. The economic model has been sufficiently successful that local communities have become active partners in conservation rather than adversaries, understanding that the living gorilla in the forest is worth far more than any potential alternative use of the land.

The logistics of gorilla trekking require planning. Accommodation around Bwindi ranges from luxury lodges perched on hilltops above the forest with spectacular views, to mid-range guesthouses in the trading centers near the park gates, to community-run budget lodges that form part of the revenue-sharing model. The most comfortable base for Buhoma sector is the range of lodges above the main gate. For Rushaga sector in the south, Kisoro town is the nearest large settlement, and several excellent lodges have been built in the surrounding hills. The drive from Kampala to Bwindi takes approximately eight to nine hours on roads that are improving but remain challenging in places. Many travelers prefer to fly: small aircraft operate from Entebbe to Kihihi airstrip near Buhoma or Kisoro airstrip near the southern sectors, reducing the journey to under an hour.

The gorilla tracking experience is available year-round, but the dry season months of June to September and December to February offer the best conditions. Visitors are limited to one hour with the gorillas to minimize stress on the animals and reduce the risk of disease transmission. Human respiratory viruses can be fatal to gorillas, and visitors with symptoms of cold or flu may be asked to stand back from the group. This is not a rule to be circumvented but one of the most important aspects of responsible gorilla tourism, a recognition that these animals' survival depends on the strictest possible health protocols.

Queen Elizabeth National Park

Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda's most visited national park, spreads across approximately 1,978 square kilometers of savanna, forest, wetland, and volcanic crater lakes in the southwestern corner of the country, flanked by the Rwenzori Mountains to the north and Lake Edward to the west on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Named in honor of Queen Elizabeth II following her visit to Uganda in 1954, the park encompasses a remarkable diversity of habitats within its boundaries and offers a wildlife experience that combines the breadth of an East African savanna park with unique attractions found nowhere else in the world.

The Kazinga Channel is the park's most celebrated feature after the Ishasha lions. This natural waterway connects Lake George to the east with Lake Edward to the west, running for approximately thirty two kilometers through the heart of the park. The channel's banks support what is believed to be the highest concentration of hippopotamus anywhere in the world: over five thousand individual hippos occupy the channel and its margins, lying in wallowing aggregations so dense that they look from the shore like a carpet of grey boulders slowly breathing in the midday heat. The afternoon boat cruise on the Kazinga Channel is one of the finest wildlife experiences in East Africa. The boat moves slowly along the channel bank, close enough to the hippos that you can hear the deep bass rumbling of their vocalizations, can see the water streaming off their flanks as they raise and lower their enormous heads, can count the individual birds perched on their backs. Nile crocodiles of extraordinary size occupy the sandy banks, motionless as logs. The birdlife is spectacular: African fish eagles calling from fig trees over the water, pied kingfishers hovering and diving, enormous flocks of lesser flamingos wading in the shallows, yellow-billed storks and marabous picking through the margins, and occasionally, the crowning prize of Ugandan birding, the shoebill stork standing motionless in the papyrus beds with the prehistoric patience of a creature that has been doing exactly this for fifty million years.

The tree-climbing lions of Ishasha are among the most extraordinary behavioral curiosities in African wildlife. The Ishasha section of Queen Elizabeth National Park occupies the southern end of the park near the Tanzanian border, and here a population of lions has developed the habit of resting and, in some cases, hunting from the branches of the massive fig trees that grow across the open savanna. Lions are capable climbers but generally prefer to stay on the ground. The Ishasha lions, however, regularly and routinely climb to heights of several meters and spend considerable portions of the day lying along broad branches above the savanna, their legs dangling. This behavior has been documented for decades, appears to be culturally transmitted within the local pride, and is also observed in a small population in Tanzania's Lake Manyara National Park and almost nowhere else in the world. The reasons for it remain debated: cooling breezes at height, avoidance of tsetse flies at ground level, better visibility for hunting, or simple learned behavior are all proposed explanations. Whatever the cause, seeing a lion draped across a fig tree branch like a large ginger cushion, regarding the world below with the universal leonine expression of magnificent indifference, is one of those African wildlife moments that lodges permanently in the memory.

The savanna sections of Queen Elizabeth, particularly the Kasenyi Plains in the north, offer traditional game viewing on the East African model. Uganda kob, a medium-sized antelope that appears on the Ugandan coat of arms, graze in large numbers across the plains. African buffalo form enormous herds of several hundred individuals. Elephants, sometimes in groups of fifty or more, move between the forest edges and the savanna grasslands. Leopards are present but elusive. Spotted hyenas hunt the plains at night. The Mweya Peninsula, a narrow tongue of land that projects into the channel where Lake George meets Lake Edward, is the site of the main lodge and visitor facilities and offers spectacular views from its elevated position over the water and the Rwenzori foothills.

Kyambura Gorge, a dramatic canyon hidden within the parkland, offers a different kind of wildlife encounter. The gorge, sometimes called the Valley of Apes, descends sharply from the surrounding plains to reveal a lush forested valley where a habituated chimpanzee community lives and can be tracked. The descent into the gorge is itself a dramatic experience: the change in vegetation from dry savanna to dense riverine forest happens within meters of the gorge edge, and the chimpanzees, which number around fifteen to twenty individuals in the habituated group, move through this forest with the terrifying speed and power that distinguishes them from gorillas. Unlike gorillas, which are generally calm and somewhat meditative, chimpanzees are loud, fast-moving, conflict-prone, and intensely social. A chimpanzee tracking session at Kyambura might begin with distant hooting that builds to a crescendo of screaming and branch-crashing as two males chase each other through the canopy twenty meters above your head, and the experience has an energy and unpredictability that complements the more contemplative gorilla encounter perfectly.

The volcanic crater lakes are one of Queen Elizabeth's least-visited but most beautiful features. Dozens of explosion craters, remnants of ancient volcanic activity that also shaped the Virunga volcanoes to the south, dot the landscape around the Crater Area of the park. Many of these craters are filled with water, and the lakes they contain vary remarkably in color and chemistry: some are clear blue reflecting the sky, others are rich green with algae, and some show layers of distinct color that speak to stratified chemical conditions in the water. The Maramagambo Forest, in the eastern section of the park, provides habitat for a community of forest elephants and contains the celebrated bat caves where enormous colonies of Egyptian fruit bats are attended upon by African rock pythons of considerable size, creating a predator-prey spectacle of reptilian patience and aerial abundance.

Kibale Forest National Park and the Primate Capital of the World

If Bwindi is the destination for mountain gorillas, Kibale Forest National Park is the destination for chimpanzees, and indeed for primates of almost every kind that exists in African forest habitats. Kibale, located in western Uganda near the town of Fort Portal, covers approximately 795 square kilometers of moist evergreen forest and grassland and has been described by the scientists who have studied it as the best place in the world to observe primates in their natural habitat. No area of comparable size anywhere on Earth contains more primate species or higher primate densities. Thirteen species of primates have been recorded in Kibale: chimpanzees, red colobus monkeys, black-and-white colobus monkeys, olive baboons, grey-cheeked mangabeys, L'Hoest's monkeys, blue monkeys, red-tailed monkeys, olive monkeys, black-and-white colobus monkeys, and more. On a single morning walk through Kibale forest, a visitor can encounter four or five different primate species without breaking a sweat.

The chimpanzee tracking experience at Kibale is different from that at Kyambura Gorge in Queen Elizabeth. Kibale's habituated chimpanzee communities are larger and better studied, and the forest terrain, while dense, is somewhat more navigable than the steep slopes of Kyambura. The Kanyantale community near the Kanyanchu visitor center has been habituated since 1991 and numbers over one hundred and forty individuals, making it one of the largest habituated chimpanzee communities in the world. Tracking begins at dawn and follows the chimpanzees through the forest as they go about their morning: building day nests, traveling to feeding trees, grooming one another, playing, sometimes engaging in the loud territorial calling and branch-drumming displays that announce their presence to neighboring communities.

The Chimpanzee Habituation Experience at Kibale is a more intensive alternative to standard tracking. This program, which allows a maximum of four participants per group, involves spending an entire day with the chimpanzees from sunrise to sunset, following them through all their activities. The experience is designed for researchers and very dedicated wildlife enthusiasts and is physically demanding, requiring a full day of walking through forest terrain. But it offers a depth of observation that the standard one-hour tracking visit cannot match, including the opportunity to watch chimpanzees hunt, something that remains one of the most dramatic and unsettling spectacles in the African forest.

Kibale is also a center of primate research, with several long-term field studies that have been running since the 1970s contributing fundamental knowledge about primate behavior, ecology, and evolution. The Makerere University Biological Field Station at Kanyantale has been the base for some of the most important chimpanzee research in Africa, and the community of primatologists who work in Kibale have produced a substantial body of scientific literature about the chimpanzees and other primates of the forest.

The birding in Kibale is excellent, with over three hundred and fifty species recorded, including many forest specialists that are difficult to find elsewhere. The green-breasted pitta, the African pitta, the Nahan's partridge, and various species of hornbill inhabit the forest interior. The wetland areas on the edge of the park support shoebill storks, papyrus endemics, and a range of waterbirds. Fort Portal, the nearest town of size to Kibale, is a pleasant highland town with a good range of accommodation and a lively market. The area around Fort Portal, known as the Tooro Kingdom, is one of the most beautiful agricultural landscapes in Uganda, its rolling hills covered in tea plantations, banana gardens, and forest patches, with the Rwenzori Mountains rising dramatically to the west.

Murchison Falls National Park

Murchison Falls National Park, in the northwest of Uganda, is the country's largest protected area, covering approximately 3,893 square kilometers of savanna, riverine forest, and delta woodland along the Victoria Nile. The park takes its name from the waterfall at its heart: Murchison Falls, where the entire volume of the Victoria Nile, one of the world's great rivers, is forced through a gap in the Rift Valley escarpment that is just seven meters wide. The result is the most powerful waterfall in the world by volume per unit width, a column of white water and spray of almost incomprehensible violence that can be heard from kilometers away and can be felt as vibration through the rock underfoot when you stand at the viewing point at the top of the falls.

The approach to Murchison Falls reveals what makes this park special. The Nile flows westward across the savanna in a wide, brown, powerful ribbon, its banks lined with tall doum palms and African mahogany trees, hippopotami surfacing regularly in the slower sections, Nile crocodiles of enormous size hauled out on sandy beaches. The boat trip from Paraa, the park's main facilities hub, to the base of the falls is an essential experience: two hours moving upstream on the Nile as the banks narrow and the current strengthens, with hippos and crocodiles becoming steadily more numerous as the falls approach. At the base of the falls the scene becomes almost surreal: the white column of water plunging from the rock cleft above, the constant thunder, the permanent rainbow in the spray, and the extraordinary concentration of life attracted to the turbulent, oxygenated water at the base.

The Murchison Falls trail leads up to the top of the falls, a steep forty-five minute hike that rewards with a view of the seven-meter cleft through which the entire Nile forces itself. Looking down from above as the brown river narrows to a boiling white torrent and leaps through the cleft before spreading out below into the plunge pool and the broader Nile channel, visitors understand why Murchison Falls was described by Winston Churchill as the most exciting vision in the Nile valley.

The savanna of Murchison Falls National Park is home to one of the largest concentrations of wildlife in East Africa outside the Serengeti ecosystem. Uganda's largest elephant population, numbering around five thousand individuals, roams the park's northern bank. Rothschild's giraffes, a subspecies listed as vulnerable with fewer than three thousand remaining in the wild, occur in good numbers in the park and can be seen walking in their characteristic slow-motion high-stepping gait across the savanna. The giraffe center in Murchison provides opportunities to feed individual animals from a raised platform. Lions, leopards, and hyenas hunt the plains. Enormous African buffalo herds raise dust clouds in the dry season. Kob antelope are abundant. The birding at Murchison is superb: the shoebill stork can be found in the Nile delta where the river enters Lake Albert, and the park's savanna and forest habitats hold over four hundred and fifty species of birds.

Lake Albert, into which the Nile flows at the western end of Murchison Falls National Park, is one of the great lakes of the Albertine Rift. The view from the Nile delta across Lake Albert to the blue wall of the Congolese mountains on the far shore is one of the grandest landscapes in Uganda. The lake supports a significant fishing industry, and the fishing villages on its shores are among the most remote and least visited settlements in the country.

Kidepo Valley National Park

Kidepo Valley National Park is the least visited and, many who have made the effort to reach it argue, the most magnificent national park in Uganda and one of the finest in all of Africa. It occupies an isolated valley in the extreme northeast of Uganda, bounded by mountain ranges on three sides and accessible only by a long drive on roads that deteriorate significantly in the wet season or by small aircraft from Entebbe or Kampala. The park covers approximately 1,442 square kilometers of arid savanna and Sudanian woodland, and it sits at the ecological boundary between East African and Sudanese savanna, which gives it a species list different from the parks of southern and western Uganda.

The sense of isolation at Kidepo is part of its appeal. Visitor numbers are a fraction of those at Queen Elizabeth or Murchison. A traveler who makes it to Kidepo may spend entire morning game drives without seeing another vehicle, a rarity in popular African safari destinations. The animals are correspondingly less habituated to vehicles than in more-visited parks, and game drives in Kidepo have a wildness and unpredictability that is different from the managed safari experience.

The wildlife of Kidepo includes species absent from the rest of Uganda. Greater kudu, with their spectacular spiral horns, occur in the park. Eland, the largest of Africa's antelopes, roam the valley floor. Striped hyenas are present alongside the spotted hyenas more familiar from southern Uganda. Bat-eared foxes can be seen in the evenings. Cheetah have been recorded. Ostriches, the world's largest bird, stride across the savanna with their peculiar rolling gait. The park holds one of Uganda's largest lion populations and is one of the finest places in Uganda to observe these animals. The elephants of Kidepo are large-tusked by comparison with populations in the more heavily poached parks, a reflection of the relative isolation of the valley.

The Karamoja people, who inhabit the broader region around Kidepo, are among the most culturally distinctive peoples in East Africa. Traditionally cattle-herding pastoralists who are closely related to the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania, the Karamojong have only relatively recently begun to shift from semi-nomadic pastoralism to more settled agriculture, a transition that continues to be contested within their communities. They are known for their remarkable body modification practices, including elaborate scarification patterns and, historically, the wearing of elaborately arranged hair and extensive bead decoration. Cultural visits to Karamojong communities around Kidepo can be arranged through responsible tourism operators and offer an extraordinary window into a way of life that has maintained significant continuity with traditional East African pastoralism.

The road to Kidepo from Kampala takes approximately nine to ten hours by private vehicle and passes through Gulu, the principal city of northern Uganda. The drive through Karamoja on the approach to the park passes through landscapes of enormous and austere beauty: flat-topped acacia trees and termite mounds on wide grassy plains, with mountain ranges rising in the distance. The journey itself, for travelers with the time and inclination for it, is a significant part of the Kidepo experience. Those preferring to fly can reach the park by light aircraft from Entebbe or Kampala in approximately one and a half hours.

Lake Mburo National Park

Lake Mburo National Park, the smallest of Uganda's savanna parks at approximately 370 square kilometers, is also the closest to Kampala, making it the most accessible option for travelers with limited time who want a taste of Ugandan wildlife without the long drive to the southwestern parks. Located approximately three hours from Kampala in the Mbarara district, Lake Mburo is the only national park in Uganda where zebra can be found, making it uniquely capable of delivering a wildlife experience that feels distinctly East African while remaining compact enough to explore thoroughly in a day or two.

Lake Mburo's ecology is defined by its five lakes, linked by extensive wetlands and papyrus swamps, and by the open acacia savanna that surrounds them. The park is home to large populations of impala, the most numerous antelope in the park, along with topi, eland, oribi, reedbuck, and buffalo. Hippos are abundant in the lakes and can be approached very closely on the boat trips that operate on Lake Mburo itself. The bird list is excellent, with over three hundred and fifteen species recorded, and the swamps hold shoebill storks and a remarkable range of papyrus-adapted endemics.

Lake Mburo is one of the few national parks in Uganda where horseback riding safaris are permitted, and exploring the savanna on horseback, with the ability to approach wildlife more quietly than in a vehicle, offers a qualitatively different experience from the conventional game drive. Night game drives reveal serval cats, bushbabies, porcupines, and other nocturnal species that daytime visitors miss entirely. Walking safaris conducted with armed rangers are also permitted in Lake Mburo, a reminder that encountering Africa's wildlife on foot, at ground level, with the full sensory engagement that walking provides, is a fundamentally different and more immediate experience than viewing from the elevated safety of a vehicle.

Semuliki National Park

Semuliki National Park, in the far west of Uganda at the foot of the Rwenzori Mountains along the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, is one of the most botanically and ornithologically rich areas in Uganda and one of the least visited. The park protects a sector of the Ituri Forest, the vast lowland rainforest of the Congo Basin, that extends east from the DRC into Uganda. It is therefore the only place in East Africa where the birds and mammals of the Congo Basin forest can be observed, and for birders this gives Semuliki a significance entirely disproportionate to its modest size.

Over 400 species of birds have been recorded in Semuliki, including thirty seven species that are found nowhere else in Uganda and that require a Congo Basin forest habitat. The forest is a very different environment from the highland forests of Kibale or Bwindi, low-lying, hot, humid, and dense, and the birdlife is correspondingly different. The forest pitta, the red-thighed sparrowhawk, the African piculet, and various species of broadbill and greenbul draw dedicated birders from around the world. Bosman's potto, a cryptic and rarely-seen primate that is nocturnal and slow-moving, inhabits the Semuliki forest, as do forest elephants and several antelope species adapted to dense forest habitats.

The Sempaya Hot Springs within the park are a striking geological feature: natural hot springs emerging from the forest floor with enough heat to boil eggs, surrounded by the extraordinary contrast of dense jungle vegetation thriving in close proximity to scalding water. The male springs and the female springs, named according to local tradition, both produce columns of steam visible from a distance. The guided walk to the hot springs through the Semuliki forest is one of the finest forest walks in Uganda, combining natural history interest with the dramatic visual spectacle of the springs themselves.