A week in Uganda: gorillas, chimps and the rest

Most visitors fly into Entebbe, drive to Bwindi, trek gorillas and fly out. That is three nights for the single most remarkable hour in African wildlife, and it is understandable. It is also a waste of the rest of a country that is greener, cheaper and far less visited than its neighbours.

The gorillas, first

Bwindi Impenetrable Forest holds nearly half the world's remaining mountain gorillas. A permit is USD 800 — roughly half what Rwanda charges — and the trade is a harder walk and a longer journey in.

The trek itself is genuinely difficult: steep, wet, and often three hours each way through vegetation that earns the forest its name. Hire a porter. It costs about USD 20, it makes the walk substantially easier, and it puts money directly into the villages beside the park, which is the whole mechanism keeping the gorillas alive.

Then the chimpanzees

Kibale Forest has the highest primate density in East Africa and the best chimpanzee tracking anywhere. It is a completely different experience from the gorillas — chimps move fast and noisily through the canopy, where gorillas sit and let you watch. Doing both in one trip is the argument for a week rather than three nights.

The Bigodi wetland walk next door, run by the community, is two hours and turns up more species than most people expect.

What else is there

Queen Elizabeth National Park sits between the two, which makes it an obvious stop rather than a detour. The Kazinga Channel boat is the best value wildlife hour in the country — hippo, buffalo and enormous numbers of birds, at eye level from the water. The tree-climbing lions of Ishasha are real but not guaranteed.

Practicalities nobody mentions

Roads are long. Entebbe to Bwindi is eight or nine hours, and the only real alternative is a flight to Kisoro. Build in the driving honestly rather than discovering it on day one.

Minimum age for gorilla trekking is 15, strictly enforced. And you cannot trek with a cold — gorillas catch human respiratory illness and it kills them.