12 Days Maasai Mara & Uganda Gorilla Safari
Mara lions, Kibale chimps and Bwindi gorillas, linked by light aircraft over twelve days
12 Days Maasai Mara & Uganda Gorilla Safari
Start with the predators. Over three nights in the Maasai Mara you learn to read the grass the way your guide does: a lioness flat in the red oat grass, a leopard's tail hanging from a riverside fig, a cheetah using a termite mound as a lookout. You stay in a private conservancy on the reserve's edge, so you can leave the track to follow a hunt, walk with Maasai guides and head out after dark with a spotlight.
Then a flight of just over an hour carries you west, from savannah to rainforest. In Kibale you follow the pant-hoots of chimpanzees through the understorey until fig seeds patter down from the canopy. On the Kazinga Channel, hippos crowd the shallows while elephants wade in to drink, and in Ishasha you scan the spreading fig trees for lions draped along the branches, tails twitching above the grass.
The finale is Bwindi. Your permit is already secured, so all you need to bring is stamina and patience: trek into steep, tangled forest to spend one unhurried hour with a family of mountain gorillas, close enough to hear a silverback chewing. Light aircraft handle the longest legs of the journey, which means your days go on wildlife rather than tarmac.
Ideal for: Travellers who want Africa's great predators and its great apes in one comfortable trip, with short flights doing the heavy lifting.
The journey in brief
You land in Nairobi and fly straight out to the Maasai Mara for three nights of lion, leopard and cheetah, split between full days in the reserve and a conservancy day with a bush walk and night drive. A flight via Nairobi brings you to Entebbe on Lake Victoria, and another lifts you west to Kasese for the drive to Kibale Forest, where you track chimpanzees and walk the Bigodi wetland. Queen Elizabeth National Park follows, with a Kazinga Channel boat trip and the climbing lions of Ishasha. You finish in Bwindi with the Batwa community and a gorilla trek, permit included, before flying from Kihihi to Entebbe for your journey home.
Highlights
Day by day
Karibu, Nairobi
Your Geob guide is waiting in the arrivals hall at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, ready to load your bags and steer you through Nairobi's traffic to your hotel in the leafy western suburbs. The rest of the day is yours. If you land early, sleep off the flight or take a slow lunch on the terrace while sunbirds probe the flowerbeds. Over dinner your guide runs through the plan: how the light-aircraft legs work, why everything must fit into a 15 kg soft bag, what to wear on a gorilla trek, and what the next eleven days will ask of you, which is mostly patience, curiosity and early alarms.
Wilson Airport to the Mara Plains
After breakfast you drive to Wilson Airport, Nairobi's busy light-aircraft hub, and board a scheduled flight south-west. The city thins into farmland, the Rift Valley drops away beneath the wing, and within the hour you are bumping down onto a murram airstrip in the Maasai Mara. Your guide is there with the vehicle, and the game drive starts on the way to the private conservancy on the reserve's northern edge where you'll be staying: topi standing sentry on termite mounds, elephants crossing the track, perhaps a pride dozing off last night's meal. After lunch and a rest, head out again as the heat breaks and the predators begin to stir.
A Full Day in the Reserve
Today belongs to the main reserve. You leave at first light with breakfast and lunch packed, so there's no need to turn back when something starts to happen. Your guide works the drainage lines along the Talek and Mara rivers, where leopards rest in the shade of riverine trees, then swings out onto the open plains where cheetahs hunt in daylight to stay clear of the lions. Reserve rules keep vehicles on the tracks, which suits patient watching: you park, cut the engine and wait for the story to unfold. Around the fire that evening, the day's sightings turn into tales.
Off the Track in the Conservancy
The private conservancy where you're staying plays by different rules, and today you use all of them. Set out on foot in the morning with a Maasai guide and an armed ranger, reading tracks in the dust and learning which shrubs herders use as toothbrushes, antiseptic and fly whisks. In the afternoon your guide can leave the track to follow a hunting cheetah or position the vehicle for the best light on a lion pride. Conservancies cap vehicle numbers, so sightings feel personal. After dinner, a night drive with a red-filtered spotlight picks out hyenas on patrol, bush babies and, with luck, a leopard at work.
Savannah to Lake Victoria
One last early drive takes you to the airstrip, with a final look at whatever the night left behind. The light aircraft returns you to Wilson Airport, where your guide transfers you across the city to Jomo Kenyatta International for the flight west to Entebbe, about an hour and a quarter. Lake Victoria spreads grey-blue beneath the wing as you descend. Your Ugandan guide meets you in arrivals, and a short drive brings you to the lake shore. Spend the evening watching fishing boats return and hornbills settle into the trees, then get an early night, because Uganda's forests start tomorrow.
Under the Rwenzori to Kibale
A scheduled flight of just over an hour carries you from Entebbe to Kasese in Uganda's far west, where the Rwenzori Mountains rise to the left of the road as you drive north toward Fort Portal. Tea estates roll out in bright green squares, and the land puckers into old volcanic craters, many holding small, deep lakes. After lunch near the edge of Kibale Forest, walk a crater rim with a local guide, past banana groves and children heading home from school, while black-and-white colobus monkeys leap between the treetops. Dinner comes with the forest settling for the night: tree hyraxes shrieking, crickets, the odd distant chimp hoot.
Chimpanzee Morning, Wetland Afternoon
Rangers brief you at the Kanyanchu visitor centre before leading small groups into the forest, where Kibale's habituated chimpanzees spend their mornings feeding. You may hear them before you see them: pant-hoots building to a scream, palms drumming on buttress roots. Once the trackers find them, you spend an hour watching a community go about its business, grooming, squabbling and swinging down to the forest floor. The minimum age is 12. After lunch, visit the community-run Bigodi Wetland Sanctuary, where a village guide leads you along boardwalks through papyrus to look for great blue turacos, red colobus and grey-cheeked mangabeys, with fees supporting local schools.
South to the Kazinga Channel
Head south past Fort Portal and the dusty town of Kasese, crossing the equator just before you enter Queen Elizabeth National Park, about three hours on the road. In the afternoon, board a boat on the Kazinga Channel, the 32-kilometre waterway linking Lake George and Lake Edward. Few places pack wildlife in so tightly: pods of hippos grunting in the shallows, buffalo wallowing up to their ears, Nile crocodiles on the sand and elephants filing down the bank to drink and spray. Pied kingfishers hover and drop around the boat. You return to the Mweya peninsula as the sun sinks over Lake Edward and the Congo hills beyond.
Kob Plains and Climbing Lions
Leave before breakfast for the Kasenyi plains, where Uganda kob gather on their breeding grounds and lions work the edges of the herds in the cool of the morning. Then drive south through the park to Ishasha, its remote southern sector, about three hours on rough roads. Ishasha's lions have a habit few others share: on hot afternoons they haul themselves into the broad limbs of sycamore fig trees and lie there, legs dangling, surveying the plains. Your guide checks the favoured trees one by one. Topi, buffalo and kob graze around them, and the Ishasha River marks the border with Congo just beyond.
Into the Impenetrable Forest
A last morning drive through Ishasha, then the road climbs south toward Bwindi, the land folding into steep hills planted with tea, millet and bananas. In about two hours you reach Buhoma on the forest's northern edge, where the trees stand like a dark green wall above the village. After lunch, spend the afternoon with members of the Batwa community, the forest's original hunter-gatherers, who were moved out when Bwindi became a national park in 1991. They show you how they once lived inside it, setting snares, gathering honey, building shelters and making fire, and they share songs and stories on their own terms.
An Hour with the Gorillas
Today is the reason Bwindi is famous. After a ranger briefing at the park office, you set off behind trackers who have been out since dawn locating the gorilla family assigned to your group. The trek can take two hours or six, on steep, muddy slopes through dense undergrowth, and a porter can carry your bag and offer a hand on the climbs. When you reach the family, everything slows down. For one hour you watch a silverback feeding, youngsters tumbling and a mother cradling an infant, keeping about seven metres back. Your permit is included and the minimum age is 15. The afternoon is for tea, a hot shower and letting it all sink in.
Kihihi to Entebbe, and Home
Breakfast with mist still hanging in the valley below Buhoma, then a drive of about an hour and a half to the Kihihi airstrip. A light aircraft lifts you over the forested ridges and farm terraces of western Uganda, landing at Entebbe in time to connect with your international flight home, or with a flight back to Nairobi if your ticket routes that way. If there's time before check-in, your guide can take you for a final stroll along the lake shore. You leave with lions and gorillas on the same memory card, a head full of birdsong and plenty of red Bwindi mud still on your boots.
Your route
The parks, lakes and towns you'll travel through, in order.
What's included
Prices
Book as a group and the saving is applied to your quote.
Rates are per person per day, sharing a room, and cover everything under what's included. Your tailored quote confirms the final price for your dates. International flights are not included.
Frequently asked questions
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Let's plan your safari
12 Days Maasai Mara & Uganda Gorilla Safari · 12 days
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