5 Days Gorilla Trekking & Wildlife Safari Uganda Experience

After an early breakfast, you’ll meet your safari guide, who will pick you up from your hotel in Kampala or Entebbe. He’ll brief you about the trip and then start the 6-hour journey to Queen Elizabeth National, southwest of Uganda.

You’ll make a stop at the Equator Crossing in Kayabwe after driving 77km from Kampala. This stop allows you the time to explore this significant geographical site, observing the sun’s way and the point of separation between the northern and southern hemispheres. A well-interpreted water experiment will be performed to show the separation of these two poles.

The place also features rewarding photography opportunities; you’ll take photos with one leg in the northern hemisphere and another in the southern hemisphere. You’ll have a lunch stop at the Igongo Cultural Centre before proceeding to the park for an afternoon game drive – your first sightings of the park’s resident game.

The ride takes about 6.5 hours.

Accommodation & meals:

• Luxury: Mweya Safari Lodge/Katara Lodge.
• Mid-range: Bush Lodge/Enganzi Game Lodge.
• Budget: Bush Lodge in the Tents/Simba Safari Camp.

Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner 

The early morning game drive is one of the most popular activities in Queen Elizabeth National Park. It gives you the opportunity to sight a variety of the park’s early risers, predators, and nocturnal mammals before they retreat to their burrows.

You can have an early morning breakfast from the lodge or pack it (you will enjoy it on your game drive), and then transfer to the Kasenyi or Mweya plains. Expect to spot herds of cape buffaloes, antelopes, leopards, lions, and a collection of both resident and migratory birds. The game drive takes about 3 hours, after which you return to the lodge for lunch and relax.

In the afternoon, you will transfer to Mweya Jetty for an afternoon 2-hour Kazinga Channel boat cruise departing at 2 p.m. It runs along a 32km stretch from Lake George to Lake Edward. The channel is a magnet for all wildlife in the park. It boasts a great variety of bird species—more than any other single destination in Africa.

Expect to spot at close range numerous Nile crocodiles drinking and resting at the water’s edge, elephants, buffaloes, and one of the world’s largest concentrations of hippos submerged in the water. With over 550 species of migrant and resident birds to explore, you are sure to tick off most of your favourites. The cruise also offers an excellent platform for photography.

After the boat cruise, which takes between 2 and 3 hours, you can do an evening game drive along the Channel track to explore the more park resident game in their evening moments, and then continue to the lodge for dinner and overnight.

Wake up to a sumptuous breakfast and get ready for a game-drive finale in the Ishasha sector south of Queen Elizabeth National Park. You will spend some time driving in its rolling plains, marked by counts of fig trees – favourite abodes of the tree-climbing lions during the day (there are about 4 prides).

So your best chance of viewing these agile cats here is to set your eyes on the short trees with overlying branches. This is a better place than any other part of the world where such species exist.

After this rather rare sighting, you will proceed to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest through the Buhoma sector. Your choice of accommodation depends on where you are going to track the gorillas from. You’ll arrive at your lodge in the evening for relaxation, dinner, and overnight. 

Accommodation & meals:

• Luxury: Mountain Gorilla Lodge/Nkuringo Bwindi Gorilla Lodge/Buhoma Lodge.
• Mid-range: Engagi Lodge/ Silverback Gorilla Lodge.
• Budget: Gorilla Valley Lodge/Bwindi Forest Lodge/Nshongi Camp.

Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner 

Have an early morning breakfast at your lodge, and then transfer to the park headquarters at 8:00am for registration and a safety briefing. You will join a group of 7 other trekkers and then be led into the forest by armed (for your safety) expert ranger guides.

Gorilla trekking in Bwindi involves choosing from among the 15 habituated gorilla families based on your age and overall fitness. You will walk along the designated trails within the impenetrable forest in search of these endangered giants. It might take between 2 and 8 hours to find a habituated family of gorillas, depending on their movement. Therefore, you may pack your lunch or some snacks, and drinking water.

Hiking the steep slopes through shrubs and thickets in search of the gentle giants in their natural habitat is a tiresome activity but very well rewarded when you first set your eyes on them. You will be allowed to spend a maximum of one hour with them, observing them playing, munching, grooming, and napping. This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment only Africa can offer you. You will take photos with them as you look straight into their inviting, expressive brown eyes.

After spending the one hour allotted to you with the gorillas, return to the headquarters to pick up your trekking certificate and return to the lodge for lunch (maybe). Later in the afternoon, you will take a walk around the community, encounter local cultures, and visit the Batwa indigenous tribe, who once occupied the forest. This visit is punctuated with traditional dances, songs, and folklore, after which you return to the lodge to relax, have dinner, and a great night.

By now, you are expected to have completed the main activities of your 5 days gorilla trekking and wildlife safari. After breakfast, embark on a scenic 477km road transfer back to Kampala or Entebbe through the magical highlands of early morning mist covered Kigezi.

Enjoy impressive views of Ntungamo’s landscaped vistas, which are decorated with extensive banana plantations and cattle farms. A lunch stop will be made at the Igongo Cultural Centre in Mbarara, and another can still be made at the Equator crossing in Kayabwe to get yourself souvenirs to carry back home. 

The ride takes about 8 hours.

No accommodation
Meals: Breakfast & Lunch.

End of the 5 Days Gorilla Trekking and Wildlife Safari.