14 Days Kenya, Uganda & Rwanda Gorilla Safari
Mara lions, Kibale chimps, tree-climbing lions and two gorilla families across three countries
14 Days Kenya, Uganda & Rwanda Gorilla Safari
This is the long way round, and it is worth every mile. The journey opens on the Maasai Mara, where three nights of game drives show you the savanna at full volume: prides sprawled in the shade of a lone tree, elephants moving in single file, vultures spiralling over a fresh kill. Then a flight carries you west to Entebbe, on the green shore of Lake Victoria.
In Uganda the country turns lush and vertical. You track chimpanzees through the tall forest of Kibale, cruise the Kazinga Channel past hundreds of hippos, scan the fig trees of Ishasha for lions sprawled along the branches, and then climb into Bwindi's steep, tangled forest for your first hour with mountain gorillas.
The road then carries you over the border at Cyanika into Rwanda, where the Virunga volcanoes rise straight out of the farmland. A second trek here, to a different family in a very different forest, shows you how much gorilla groups vary in character and mood. A morning with golden monkeys and a last drive to Kigali close a fortnight that links three countries, a lake cruise, two gorilla families and more primates than most travellers manage in several trips. Both gorilla permits are arranged in advance and included.
Ideal for: Curious, active travellers who want the complete East African primate circuit, with two gorilla treks and chimps, after a classic Mara safari.
The journey in brief
The journey starts with a night in Nairobi and a bush flight to the Maasai Mara, where three nights of drives cover the reserve. On day five you fly from Nairobi to Entebbe, then on to Kasese the next morning for the drive to Kibale Forest, where a wetland walk and a morning of chimpanzee tracking follow. Queen Elizabeth National Park brings a Kazinga Channel boat cruise and a dawn drive on the Kasenyi plains before you head south to Ishasha for its tree-climbing lions. Two nights at Bwindi include your first gorilla trek. You then drive to the Cyanika border and into Rwanda, trek a second gorilla family in Volcanoes National Park, track golden monkeys on the final morning and drive to Kigali for your flight home.
Highlights
Day by day
Night One in Nairobi
Welcome to Kenya. Once you clear immigration at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, your Geob Ventures guide takes your bags and steers you out into the warm air for the drive to a calm hotel set among gardens on the edge of the city. Shake off the journey with a swim or a nap. Over dinner, your trip lead lays out the shape of the next fortnight: three countries, two border crossings, a lake cruise, two gorilla families and a long list of monkeys and apes. Tomorrow's bush flight has a limit of 15 kg each, in soft bags only, so repack tonight; anything extra stays with our Nairobi team and rejoins you before you fly to Uganda.
The Mara from Air and Ground
A morning transfer brings you to Wilson Airport, where small planes come and go like taxis. The flight west crosses the escarpment of the Great Rift Valley before the Maasai Mara opens beneath you, a vast tilt of grassland stitched with lines of riverine trees. Your guide meets you at the airstrip and, because nobody in the Mara drives anywhere without stopping, the transfer to camp becomes your first game drive. After lunch and a rest, the afternoon drive heads out as the heat breaks. Topi stand sentry on termite mounds, warthogs trot off with tails raised like radio aerials, and somewhere nearby a lion pride is beginning to stir.
The Long Day in the Reserve
With a picnic loaded in the vehicle, today has no clock. You leave at first light and range deep into the Maasai Mara National Reserve, sticking to its tracks but covering serious ground: the riverine thickets where leopards rest along the Talek, the open plains where cheetahs scan from fallen trees, the banks of the Mara River where hippos grunt and jostle for space. Between July and October the wildebeest and zebra of the Great Migration may be massing on the plains or lining up at the crossings. Lunch is under a solitary tree with a view in every direction. You return to camp at dusk, dusty, sunburnt at the edges and very content.
Sunrise Options and Maasai Neighbours
Early risers can book a hot-air balloon flight, lifting off before sunrise for an hour above the plains and a breakfast served wherever the basket comes down. Everyone else enjoys a gentle morning drive and a slow breakfast at camp. Late morning brings a visit to a Maasai community, where you are welcomed into a homestead of mud-and-dung houses inside a thorn fence, see fire made with a spinning stick, and hear how cattle shape every part of life here. The afternoon drive is your last in Kenya, so let your guide choose the route: they will know which pride or cheetah is most likely to be active as the light fades.
Across to Lake Victoria
After breakfast you fly back to Wilson Airport, where your stored luggage rejoins you, and transfer across the city to Jomo Kenyatta International for the flight to Entebbe, a little over an hour. Uganda shares Kenya's time zone, so there are no clocks to change. Entebbe feels more like a sleepy lakeside town than a gateway, with fruit bats roosting in tall trees and the shore of Lake Victoria a short stroll away. Your Ugandan guide meets you in arrivals and settles you in. Spend the evening watching fishing boats come home as the light fades over the water, and turn in early, since tomorrow's flight leaves in the morning.
Mountains of the Moon and a Forest Edge
A light aircraft carries you west across Uganda's patchwork of farms and papyrus swamps to Kasese, with the Rwenzori, the fabled Mountains of the Moon, often showing through the haze on approach. Your guide, who has driven the vehicle and any extra luggage west to meet you, takes the road north past Fort Portal's tea estates to Kibale Forest, about two hours. In the afternoon you walk the boardwalks and trails of the Bigodi Wetland Sanctuary, a community-run swamp whose income supports local schools. Expect red colobus and grey-cheeked mangabeys in the trees and, with luck, a great blue turaco, a turkey-sized bird with a crest like a punk and electric-blue plumage.
In the Company of Chimpanzees
Chimpanzee tracking starts with a ranger briefing at around 8 am, then a walk into tall forest of figs, mahoganies and strangler vines. You often hear the chimps before you see them: a rising chorus of pant-hoots, then a drumroll as a male slaps the buttress roots of a tree. Kibale is home to roughly 1,500 chimpanzees, and the habituated community here is used to quiet visitors. You spend an hour watching them feed, squabble, groom and swing overhead; you must be 12 or older to join. After lunch, drive out to the crater lakes near Fort Portal, where round green bowls of water sit between steep, cultivated ridges.
Hippos of the Kazinga Channel
The drive south to Queen Elizabeth National Park takes about three hours, dropping from the cool highlands onto the hot floor of the Albertine Rift and crossing the Equator, where a simple marker invites the obligatory photo. After lunch you board a boat for a two-hour cruise on the Kazinga Channel, the waterway that links Lake George and Lake Edward. The banks are crowded with life: pods of hippos, buffalo wallowing in the shallows, elephants drinking a few metres from the hull and crocodiles basking with jaws agape. Birders can tick pied kingfishers, African skimmers and fish eagles without trying. Tonight, listen for hippos cropping grass in the dark.
Lions in the Fig Trees
Head out at dawn onto the Kasenyi plains, where Uganda kob gather on their mating grounds and the lions that hunt them are often still on the move. After breakfast, the road runs south through the park to the Ishasha sector, about three hours away on rough tracks, with Congo just across the river. Ishasha is famous for one thing above all: lions that climb into the spreading branches of old fig trees to escape the heat and the biting flies. This afternoon your guide checks the favourite trees one by one. Finding a lioness draped over a limb, tail twitching above your head, is one of the strangest sights in African wildlife.
Into the Impenetrable Forest
After a final morning drive among Ishasha's topi and buffalo, you continue south to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, about two and a half hours through tea gardens and steep farmland. The forest appears as a dark wall of green poured over the hills, so dense that mist hangs in it well into the afternoon. Bwindi shelters nearly half of the world's mountain gorillas, and tonight you sleep at its edge in the northern sector around Buhoma. Late in the afternoon, take a village walk with local guides who show you banana beer brewing, a traditional healer's garden and a school supported by gorilla tourism. Lay out your trekking gear before dinner.
Gorilla Day in Bwindi
Breakfast is early for the 8 am ranger briefing, where you are assigned to one of Bwindi's habituated gorilla families. Your Ugandan permit is already in hand. The trek can be short or it can take most of the day, climbing and sliding down slopes thick with ferns, vines and fallen trunks, so gloves, gaiters and a walking stick all earn their keep. Porters from the surrounding villages carry your daypack and offer a hand on the steep bits. When the trackers signal, you leave your stick behind and step into a clearing to spend one hour with the family, close enough to hear them breathe. A hot shower has rarely felt so good.
Over the Border at Cyanika
Today you trade Uganda for Rwanda by road. The drive south from Bwindi winds over high ridges and through the town of Kisoro, with the Virunga volcanoes growing larger in the windscreen, and takes five to six hours in all with a lunch stop. At the Cyanika border post you clear Ugandan exit and Rwandan entry, usually within half an hour if you hold the East Africa Tourist Visa. Two small adjustments: vehicles here drive on the right, and plastic bags are banned, so hand any over at the border. Your Rwandan guide takes over for the short drive to Volcanoes National Park, arriving in time for a relaxed afternoon and a fireside dinner.
A Second Gorilla Family
Back into the forest, but it feels different here. The 7 am briefing at Kinigi gathers trekkers from across the world, and rangers assign you to one of the park's habituated families. The approach climbs through fields of potatoes and white pyrethrum flowers to the stone wall of the park, then into bamboo and open hagenia woodland, far lighter than Bwindi's tangle. Your Rwandan permit is included. Comparing families is part of the joy: this group might have more youngsters, a younger silverback or a famously grumpy matriarch. The hour passes even faster than it did in Bwindi. In the afternoon, rest, or visit a cultural village run by former poachers turned conservationists.
Golden Monkeys and the Road to Kigali
Your final morning brings a lighter trek into the bamboo to find golden monkeys, fizzing with energy as they leap between stems and chatter overhead. The walk is usually shorter than a gorilla trek, and the green light filtering through the bamboo is wonderful for photography. After lunch your guide drives you about two and a half hours to Kigali, through hills terraced from valley floor to summit. If your flight leaves late enough, there is time for the Kigali Genocide Memorial, a sobering and essential stop for understanding modern Rwanda. A farewell dinner near the airport rounds things off before your departure, two weeks, three countries and a great many primates later.
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.
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14 Days Kenya, Uganda & Rwanda Gorilla Safari · 14 days
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