7-Day Uganda (Entebbe Start): Primates, Plains & Cultural Heartbeats

Your driver-guide meets you at Entebbe International Airport. If you arrive in the morning, you drive about 40 km north into Kampala for an afternoon introduction to the capital: the Kasubi Tombs of the Buganda kings, the Kabaka's Palace at Mengo and the view from the minaret of the Gaddafi National Mosque. As evening falls you can watch traditional music, dance and storytelling at the Ndere Cultural Centre.

If you land later in the day, you simply transfer to your hotel to rest. Either way the night is spent in Entebbe, ready for an early start north.

An early departure takes you north through Kampala towards Masindi. About 3 hours from the capital you stop at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary, the only place in Uganda where white rhinos live in the wild. With a ranger you track them on foot through the bush and watch them graze at a respectful distance.

After lunch you continue to Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda's oldest and largest park, arriving at your lodge in the late afternoon.

At dawn you cross the Victoria Nile by ferry at Paraa for a game drive on the northern bank. The Buligi tracks lead through palm-dotted grassland where Rothschild's giraffes, elephants, buffaloes, Jackson's hartebeest and Uganda kob graze, and lions are often found resting in the shade.

After lunch a launch carries you upstream past hippos, crocodiles and a wealth of birds to the foot of the falls. Later you drive round to the top of Murchison Falls, where the entire Nile forces itself through a gap just 7 metres wide and plunges 45 metres in a deafening roar of white water and spray.

Today is a long but scenic travel day of about 7–8 hours. You head south via Hoima, with views over the Albertine Rift escarpment and, in places, glimpses of Lake Albert, then through farmland and forest to Fort Portal, the royal town of the Tooro Kingdom, set among tea estates beneath the Rwenzori Mountains.

You stop for lunch along the way and reach your lodge on the edge of Kibale Forest in the late afternoon, in time to relax and listen to the evening sounds of the rainforest.

After an early breakfast you join a ranger-guide at Kanyanchu and set off into the forest in search of chimpanzees. Kibale is home to about 1,500 of them and 13 primate species in all, and your hour with a habituated community, watching them feed, play and call to one another, is an experience you will never forget.

In the afternoon you walk with a local guide through the Bigodi Wetland Sanctuary and the neighbouring village. The community runs the sanctuary and uses its income for schools and local projects. Alongside red colobus monkeys and colourful birds, you learn about daily life, farming and traditions in this corner of the Tooro Kingdom.

Leave Kibale after an early breakfast and drive south past the crater lakes into the Albertine Rift, about 2–3 hours to Queen Elizabeth National Park. You head straight onto the Kasenyi plains for a game drive among herds of Uganda kob, buffaloes and elephants, keeping watch for the lions that hunt here.

After lunch you cruise for two hours along the Kazinga Channel between Lake Edward and Lake George, past hundreds of hippos, basking crocodiles, elephants at the water's edge and remarkable birdlife. The evening is spent at your lodge in the park.

After an early breakfast you set off on the drive back to Entebbe, about 7–8 hours, through Mbarara and the Ankole cattle country with its magnificent long-horned cows. You pause at the Equator at Kayabwe for photographs and stop for lunch on the way.

You reach Entebbe in the early evening and are dropped at Entebbe International Airport for your departure flight. If you would rather fly from the park, a scheduled domestic flight from Kasese or Mweya to Entebbe can be arranged at extra cost.