Complete Uganda (Small Group)

Airport Guest House
This comfortable lodge is situated within easy driving distance of Entebbe Airport and offers just 14 guest rooms overlooking attractive gardens. In addition to its 14 rooms, the Airport Guest House features a cosy bar and restaurant area which serves as the usual setting for meals, except on clear evenings when the garden is converted into an open-air dining area.

This evening, you can expect to meet with the rest of your safari group as they arrive into Entebbe. Dinner this evening to own account.

Following the rhino tracking, you continue to Murchison Falls National Park, where you check-in at Pakuba Safari Lodge for two nights.

Pakuba Safari Lodge
Pakuba enjoys a fabulous location in northern Murchison Falls National Park, perched on the banks of the Albert Nile and within easy driving distance of the famous Falls.

Pakuba is a comfortable, medium-sized safari lodge with 46 guest rooms. All of the rooms are attractively-furnished, en-suite, and open onto a private verandah. Facilities include an open-air bar and restaurant area, and swimming pool.

During the drive, you can hope to see a number of large mammals, including giraffe, hippo, elephant and plentiful antelope. With luck, you may also catch sight of one of Murchison Fall’s resident lion prides, as they hunt in the early hours of the morning.

The game drive will finish at midday with a picnic lunch on the shores of Lake Albert.

In the afternoon, board a riverboat for a guided safari upriver to Murchison Falls, with good opportunities to spot hippo, crocodile, elephant and buffalo along the way, as well as several water birds, including the charismatic shoebill stork. The cruise will also take you up close to the 40m-high waterfalls, allowing for some fabulous photos!

Late afternoon, return to Pakuba Safari Lodge for dinner and overnight.

This is a lengthy drive of approx. 7 hours on an often-bumpy road, but there will be a number of stops to break up the long journey. In the morning, you’ll have a chance to visit the Boomu Women’s Group in the village of Kihaguzi, where you can learn more about life in a Ugandan village and the various means by which the village economy is sustained, from farming and bee-keeping to traditional handicrafts, weaving and bead-making.

Your journey then continues south via Hoima, a small town situated mid-way between Murchison Falls and Kibale, through the lively town of Fort Portal, where you stop for lunch, and finally to your lodge outside Kibale Forest.

Dinner and overnight at Kibale Guest Cottages.

Kibale Guest Cottages
This comfortable, mid-range lodge offers a convenient gateway to Kibale Forest and its surrounding attractions, being within easy driving distance of the starting point for chimp tracking as well as Bigodi Wetland tours. The lodge comprises 12 East African-style rondavels, set within 5-acres of attractive gardens and centred on an open-air bar and lounge area.

You’ll spend one hour with Kibale’s habituated chimpanzees, watching from a close distance as they play and interact with one another. In addition to the chimpanzees, you can also hope to see red tailed monkey, black and white colobus monkey, and several other species of primate during your trek.

After a hearty lunch at the lodge, transfer to the Bigodi Swamp for another, very different nature walk, where the focus will be on Kibale’s stunning birdlife as much as its primates, with possible sightings including great blue turaco, papyrus gonolek, and many varieties of barbet, woodpecker, roller and weaver bird.

Dinner and overnight at Kibale Guest Cottages.

Expect to arrive at Parkview Safari Lodge, located just outside Queen Elizabeth National Park’s northern boundary, in good time for lunch.

After lunch at the lodge and some time to rest, embark on a sundowner cruise (drinks and canapés included!) on the Kazinga Channel, the natural channel that separates Lakes Edward and George in Queen Elizabeth National Park. This is one of the most wildlife-rich regions of the park, as plentiful birdlife, as well as elephant, buffalo, hippo and frequently also lion can be seen in or along the shores of the channel.

Dinner and overnight at Parkview Safari Lodge.

Parkview Safari Lodge
Parkview Safari Lodge enjoys a great location just outside the northern gate to Queen Elizabeth National Park, where it perches on a high hill overlooking the Kasenyi Plains. It offers accommodation in comfortable cottages, constructed with thatch, canvas and wood, and set on raised wooden decking in order to make the most of the views.

Guest facilities include a small swimming pool with loungers, and a spacious open-air dining, bar and lounge area with outdoor dining terrace. 

Though in former years badly affected by poaching, Queen Elizabeth today boasts a diversity of game. As many as 100 mammals are found in the park, including lion (Queen Elizabeth's lions are famous for their fondness of sleeping in trees!), leopard, elephant, jackal and spotted hyena.

This morning’s game drive will see you focus on the Kasenyi Plains region of Queen Elizabeth National Park, where the low grasses and comparatively sparse vegetation allows for rewarding game-viewing.

Following the morning game drive and a picnic lunch, you continue your journey south, taking the main road through Queen Elizabeth National Park to reach its southern Ishasha sector, where you enjoy an afternoon game drive. Ishasha is most famous for its tree-climbing lions, who can frequently be seen lolling in the canopies of the region’s ubiquitous fig trees, most often late in the morning and early afternoon as they rest during the midday heat.

Late afternoon, check-in at Enjojo Lodge for dinner and overnight.

Enjojo Lodge
Enjojo Lodge enjoys a wonderfully tranquil setting in Queen Elizabeth National Park’s southern Ishasha sector, set within a copse of acacia trees and overlooking a small natural lake. A classic East African bush lodge, it features seven individually furnished guest cottages, constructed with wood, thatch and bamboo, and linked to one another and to the central guest areas via raised wooden walkways. At the centre of the lodge is a grass-thatched dining and bar area, and a firepit where sundowner drinks are enjoyed each evening.

Expect to arrive in Bwindi, home of the endangered mountain gorillas, in good time for lunch at your lodge, Mahogany Springs.

Mahogany Springs
Overlooking the pristine waters of the Munyanga River and the forests of Bwindi, the natural setting of Mahogany Springs is beautiful. It is also very convenient, being just 2 minutes’ drive from the Buhoma headquarters, starting point for gorilla tracking expeditions into this region of north-west Bwindi.

Mahogany Springs accommodates only a small number of guests in its 8 luxury bandas, each with en-suite bathroom and a private terrace overlooking the forest.

The experience of tracking the gorillas can vary greatly depending on the weather conditions on the day as well as the location of the gorillas, who are highly itinerant and prone to roam large distances! You should be prepared for the possibility that you will need to walk a long distance in steep and muddy conditions, sometimes with rain overhead, before you encounter your assigned gorilla family. Keen walkers will love the experience of exploring Bwindi’s beautiful forest ecosystem, while for others, the walk may be challenging. But whatever the travails en route, the reward is more than commensurate to the effort involved!

On reaching the gorilla family, you will spend one hour with them, watching at close range as they interact with another, eat, rest and play.

Dinner and overnight at Mahogany Springs.

Amongst the smallest of Uganda’s national parks, Lake Mburo is a compact gem. Part-savannah and part-wetland, the park protects a diversity of wildlife, including over 350 bird species, as well as leopard, topi, zebra, hyena and plentiful plains game.

Start your exploration of Lake Mburo with an afternoon boat safari on the lake, before transferring to Rwakobo Rock Lodge for dinner and overnight.

Rwakobo Rock Lodge
Rwakobo Rock Lodge perches on a rocky kopje on the edge of Lake Mburo National Park, overlooking the expansive plains below. It accommodates its guests in spacious thatch cottages dotted around the hill with a thought to both privacy and maximising the wonderful views. All of the rooms have solar lighting and en-suite bathrooms with flush toilets, solar heated showers and filtered drinking water.

In the afternoon, depart Lake Mburo National Park and make the return journey to Entebbe, a drive of approx. 5 hours.

Your journey ends in Entebbe. If flying out this evening, you will be dropped off at Entebbe International Airport in time for your international flight out. We can also arrange for a night’s accommodation in Entebbe if required, with rates starting from approx. $80 per person for a comfortable airport lodge on B&B basis.