overview
Once described as "the Pearl of Africa" by Winston Churchill, Uganda is a land of extraordinary contrasts, a land blessed with outstanding beauty, rich in cultural history and biodiversity. This is a land where the local people are genuinely friendly and happy to see you, tourists are still in low numbers, and the wildlife is still wild.
Not only do you have access to most of the savannah game that you would see in the Serengeti or the Mara but there is a wide variety of forests, lakes and mountains. Straddling the equator, the country’s dominant feature is water, the ever-flowing Nile, the vast blue of Lakes Victoria, Edward, George, and Albert, and an expansive network of wetlands, marsh and rivers. Dramatic mountains punctuate the landscape: the snowcapped RwenzoriMountains, the misty volcanic ranges of the southwest, and the massive Mount Elgon in the East of the country provide a breezy relief to the tropical forests and grasslands below.
Uganda
is a truly unique safari destination with the highest concentration of primates on earth. People are drawn from around the world to track chimpanzees and to experience the face to face encounter of a lifetime: that with a massive mountain gorilla.
Mountain gorillas are the rarest of the three subspecies of gorillas and the mountain Gorillas of Bwindi are part of a worldwide population of just 650 individuals. The gorillas that can be tracked here belong to one of two habituated family groups. For up to five years each, these groups have undergone an extremely delicate process that has gradually brought them to tolerate the presence of humans for a brief period every day and allowed a few privileged visitors to interact with them in the wild.
Coming face to face with these amiable primates is both awe inspiring and scary. Fearsome in appearance yet remarkably peaceable creatures almost everybody that visits the gorillas experiences the most spine-tingling wildlife experience possible.
This trip combines several visits to see the mountain gorillas of Bwindi. In addition, this could be combined with game viewing in QueenElizabethNational Park, chimp trekking in Kyambura Gorge, a boat trip on the Kazinga Channel, or a visit to the wilderness of the northern KidepoNational Park.
Although the volume of game cannot be compared to the Serengeti or Masai Mara, Queen Elizabeth Park is home to lion, leopard, hippo and elephant, all with the backdrop of the magnificent Rwenzori mountains, and the Kazinga Channel offers you one of the best river safaris in East Africa. Chimpanzees are some of mankind's closest relatives and tracking them along the Kyambura Gorge offers a completely different experience to tracking the mountain gorilla. Listening to them, as they drum on tree buttresses to call in their family or friends is a "back to nature" experience.
And if you are looking for true wilderness within the confines of exquisite accommodation and service, then a trip to Uganda would not be complete without a visit to Apoka Lodge in Kidepo Valley National Park in the far northern reaches of the country. The only lodge in the park, Apoka Lodge sits in the middle of this remote wilderness where dramatic jagged mountains loom over golden savannah, peculiar conical hills sprout out of the grasslands, and prides of lions survey the scene atop rocky kopjes. Kidepo Valley National Park is home to giraffe, zebra, elephant, lion, cheetah, huge herds of buffalo, waterbuck, oribi, warthog and an incredible array of bird species. On foot, in the car, from your bath or verandah, from the edge of the beautiful rock pool, Apoka lodge is an ideal base from which to explore and view Kidepo’s inhabitants.
There is so much to see and explore in Uganda, so please contact us at Wonderful World on +44 (0)208 964 5564. We will be delighted to put together an itinerary designed especially for you.