5-Day Uganda Gorilla and Chimpanzee Safari

You'll leave Kampala after an early breakfast for the drive to Queen Elizabeth National Park, a journey of around 420 kilometres that takes six to seven hours with stops. The route crosses the equator at Kayabwe, where you can pause for photos on the painted line, before descending through tea estates and banana plantations into the floor of the western rift valley.

You'll arrive at Twin Lakes Safari Lodge by mid to late afternoon, in time to settle in before an evening game drive on the Kasenyi plains. This open grassland holds Uganda kob in large numbers, along with buffalo, warthog and the lions that follow them, and the light softens as the sun drops toward the Rwenzori foothills.

After breakfast you'll head down to the water for a boat cruise on the Kazinga Channel, the narrow waterway linking Lakes Edward and George. Your guide will point out the hippo pods that crowd the shallows, along with buffalo herds, elephant coming down to drink, and dense concentrations of pelicans, cormorants and kingfishers along the banks.

In the afternoon you'll drive roughly two hours south to the Ishasha sector, known for lions that climb into the branches of fig and acacia trees to escape the heat and biting flies at ground level. Sightings depend on where the pride has settled that day, but the drive itself crosses classic savanna and riverine woodland before you return north to the lodge for the night.

You'll leave Queen Elizabeth after breakfast for the three to four hour drive south to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, climbing steadily out of the rift valley into the Kigezi highlands. The terraced hillsides here are some of the most densely farmed in Uganda, and the road winds through switchbacks with wide views over the valleys before dropping into forest.

On arrival at Travellers Rest Hotel, close to the Buhoma park boundary, you'll check in and have time to rest after the journey. Your guide will run through the briefing for the following day's gorilla trek, covering group sizes, fitness levels and what to pack, while the forest wall rising behind the lodge gives a first sense of the terrain ahead.

You'll be up early for a briefing at the park headquarters before setting off into the forest with your guide and a team of trackers. Bwindi's terrain is steep and often muddy, and the trek to reach a habituated gorilla family can take anywhere from one to several hours through dense understorey between 1,600 and 2,600 metres altitude. Once you locate the group you'll spend a closely regulated hour watching them feed and move, before retracing your steps back to the trailhead.

After lunch and a change of clothes, you'll drive around two hours to Lake Bunyonyi, one of the few lakes in the region free of bilharzia and crocodiles. Checking into Bunyonyi Overland Resort, you'll have time for a late-afternoon dugout canoe paddle across the calm water between its terraced islands.

After a relaxed breakfast overlooking the lake, you'll drive south toward the Uganda-Rwanda border at Katuna/Gatuna, a trip of around two hours through more terraced hill country. Border formalities typically take thirty to sixty minutes, after which you'll continue into Rwanda on quieter, well-maintained roads.

The drive on to Kigali takes a further two to three hours, passing through the rolling hills that give Rwanda its reputation as the land of a thousand hills. You'll arrive in the city by mid to late afternoon, marking the end of the safari, with time before your onward flight to visit a viewpoint over Kigali's hillside neighbourhoods if your schedule allows.