4-Day Uganda (Entebbe Start): Primates, Plains and Untamed Wonders

Your driver-guide collects you from Entebbe International Airport or your Entebbe hotel in the early morning, and you set off west on the long and scenic road to Kibale. The drive takes about 6–7 hours, passing through Kampala's busy outskirts, the rolling farmland of Mubende and the tea estates that cloak the hills around Fort Portal.

Fort Portal is the seat of the Tooro Kingdom and one of Uganda's most attractive towns, with the Rwenzori Mountains on the horizon on clear days. From here it is a short drive south to the edge of Kibale Forest, where you check in to your lodge in time for dinner.

Listen out after dark: the forest is alive with tree hyraxes, insects and, if you are lucky, the distant pant-hoots of chimpanzees.

After an early breakfast you report to the Kanyanchu visitor centre for a briefing before heading into the forest with an armed ranger-guide. Kibale is home to around 1,500 chimpanzees and is widely regarded as the best place in East Africa to see them in the wild. Tracking can take anything from one to several hours, and once the group is found you spend an hour watching them feed, groom, squabble and call through the canopy. Keep an eye out for red colobus, grey-cheeked mangabeys and L'Hoest's monkeys too; the park shelters 13 primate species.

After lunch you continue south through the crater-lake country and down onto the floor of the Albertine Rift, a drive of about 2–3 hours, to Queen Elizabeth National Park. You may already spot elephants, buffaloes and Uganda kob as you near your lodge.

Set off at first light for a game drive on the Kasenyi plains, the best area of the park for big cats. Lions hunt the herds of Uganda kob here, and you will also look for elephants, buffaloes, warthogs, waterbuck and, with luck, a leopard draped along a branch. The views across the savannah to the Rwenzori Mountains are superb in the soft morning light.

After lunch you join a two-hour boat cruise on the Kazinga Channel, the natural waterway linking Lake Edward and Lake George. It holds one of the largest hippo populations in Africa, and you drift past wallowing pods, basking Nile crocodiles, elephants and buffaloes drinking at the shore, and a dazzling variety of waterbirds, from pied kingfishers to African fish eagles.

Return to your lodge for a relaxed final evening on safari.

After an early breakfast you begin the long drive back to Entebbe, about 7–8 hours, via Mbarara and Masaka through the cattle country of Ankole with its long-horned cows. You stop at the Equator at Kayabwe for photographs and a coffee, and break for lunch along the way.

You reach Entebbe in the early evening, in time for your departure flight from Entebbe International Airport. If your flight leaves the following day, we can arrange an extra night in Entebbe.