Uganda Safari: Why the Pearl of Africa Belongs on Your Safari List

Gorillas, tree-climbing lions and forests unlike anywhere else in East Africa

I have been guiding safaris across Africa for decades, and Uganda consistently surprises people, even those who have already visited Kenya, Tanzania or Botswana. The wildlife here is different. The landscapes are different. The primate encounters you find in Uganda’s forests are unlike anything the open savannah offers, and the combination of forest, wetland and grassland within a single itinerary makes for a genuinely varied trip. Whether you are planning a Uganda safari as a couple looking for something beyond the well-worn circuits, or as a family hoping to share something meaningful with your children, Uganda rewards the visit in ways that are difficult to replicate elsewhere.

Bwindi: Half the World’s Mountain Gorillas Live Here

Ancient rainforest, habituated families and Batwa heritage

For most travellers, gorilla tracking in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park is the centrepiece of a Uganda wildlife safari, and for good reason. Bwindi is home to approximately half of the world’s remaining mountain gorillas, estimated at around 1,000 individuals, and it remains one of very few places on earth where you can spend time with these primates in their natural forest habitat.

The forest itself is ancient. Thought to be one of Africa’s oldest rainforests, Bwindi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site covering around 321 square kilometres of densely vegetated ridges and steep valleys in south-western Uganda. The walk to find a habituated gorilla family can take anywhere from one hour to five hours, depending on where the group has moved overnight. When you find them, and you will, the permitted hour of observation passes quickly.

What strikes most people is not the size of the gorillas, though that is certainly something, but the quality of their attention. They are entirely unbothered by your presence. Mothers nurse infants, juveniles chase each other through the undergrowth, and silverbacks go about the business of eating with unhurried calm. As a photographer, I find Bwindi endlessly compelling: the light is difficult and the forest is dense, but the intimacy of the encounter is rarely matched anywhere in Africa. For families travelling with older children and teenagers, gorilla tracking offers the kind of tangible connection to the natural world that no classroom experience can provide.

Beyond gorillas, Bwindi offers 340 bird species and numerous forest walks that reveal the forest’s other inhabitants: forest elephants, duikers and various monkey species. The forest’s biodiversity is considerable, and even if the gorillas were not there, the rainforest itself would merit the visit. No Bwindi visit is complete without meeting the original forest dwellers, the Batwa pygmies.

The Batwa are among Africa’s oldest indigenous peoples, who lived as hunter-gatherers within the forests of south-western Uganda for thousands of years before being displaced when Bwindi and Mgahinga were gazetted as national parks in 1991. Today, cultural encounters with Batwa communities offer a glimpse into their forest knowledge, traditions and oral history, and provide the community with a direct economic benefit from conservation.

Another excellent community-based activity is a visit to the Gorilla Junction Foundation, a community and conservation organisation based in Nkuringo, on the edge of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. It focuses on empowering local women and children through skills training in tailoring, arts and crafts, and hospitality, while supporting Batwa community development and conservation education.

Lion and Leopard Tracking on the Kasenyi Plains

Joining researchers for a closer, more informed kind of sighting

Moving into the northern sector of Queen Elizabeth National Park, the landscape opens up considerably. The Kasenyi Plains, on the western shore of Lake George, support a healthy population of lions and provide some of Uganda’s more reliable big cat sightings. What makes Kasenyi particularly valuable as a safari experience is the opportunity to join researchers working with a lion and leopard telemetry tracking programme.

Using radio-collar data, researchers can locate individual animals with a precision that standard game drives rarely achieve. Going out with the team in the early morning, before most other visitors are moving, regularly results in close, extended sightings of animals whose movements and territories are well understood. You gain not just a sighting, but genuine insight into individual lions and leopards: their family structures, their ranges, their histories within the park. This kind of experience sits at the intersection of safari and applied conservation science, and it tends to be particularly engaging for curious travellers who want to understand what they are looking at rather than simply photograph it.

Chimpanzee Tracking in Kibale Forest and Bigodi Wetland Sanctuary

Thirteen primate species and a community-run wetland walk

Kibale Forest National Park, in western Uganda, holds one of the highest densities of primates in Africa. Thirteen primate species live within the forest, including red-tailed monkeys, L’Hoest’s monkeys, grey-cheeked mangabeys, and both red and black-and-white colobus. Uganda as a whole is home to more than 5,000 chimpanzees, and Kibale is the country’s most reliable location for chimpanzee tracking. The habituated groups here allow for close observation during the permitted viewing period, and the forest setting makes for compelling photography.

After the chimpanzee trek, Bigodi Wetland Sanctuary offers a different but equally worthwhile experience. Established as a community-based conservation project, Bigodi channels its revenues into local schools, health facilities and family livelihoods in the villages surrounding the park. As someone who has spent considerable time working on the relationship between conservation and community development in Africa, I find Bigodi to be one of the more honest examples of how wildlife protection can be made sustainable. When local communities have a direct economic stake in protecting a forest, outcomes improve for the wildlife, the land and the people.

In the afternoon, a visit to the local community gives an insight into family agriculture and coffee growing, along with a visit to Banaman, a local entrepreneur who produces banana juice, banana beer and banana gin. The sanctuary supports 138 confirmed bird species, including the striking Great Blue Turaco, and primates from the adjacent national park move freely through the wetland, so additional sightings are common throughout the walk.