It’s famous for its gorilla and chimpanzee safaris, but there’s a lot more to exploring Uganda, says Jamie Ball
I’m in a Ugandan rainforest, surrounded by a community of 18 stunning chimpanzees. They pass our tour group, one by one, following their power-strutting alpha male. I feel like Tarzan, minus the loincloth, coming home to his tribe after too many years aping humans. I can’t keep my eyes off them. The chimps, however, don’t quite share the sentiment.
To reach these primates, we’ve trekked into the Kyambura Gorge, a deep, 11km-long sunken streak of tropical rainforest etched through tree-dotted grasslands in Kyambura Wildlife Reserve. We ignored fresh lion tracks along the tight, winding path, eventually reaching this near-200-metre-wide patch of rainforest – a place where pods of cantankerous hippos dwell in dark waters, and elephants and buffalo descend to drink.
As we watch, the alpha chimpanzee races forward to the base of a giant fig tree and hammers his knuckles across it – channelling Animal, the drummer in The Muppet Show band. Then he ascends a monstrous tree above us, ‘vocalising‘ even stronger. His troops soon follow him up, letting off a symphony of shrieks that could be heard from Saturn, giving me almighty giggles.
Uganda is well-known for its chimpanzees, and mountain gorillas in the southwest, but as I learn on an 11-day safari with Wild Places Africa, there’s a lot more to it. It packs perhaps the most diverse safari experience on the planet, with over 330 mammal species (including the nonsensical, so-called ‘Big Five’), as well as 20 primate species, and over 1,000 bird species – the most spectacular, eye-catching avians I have ever witnessed.
It has one of the most powerful waterfalls in Africa (Murchison Falls, which we visit), the continent’s largest river (the Nile, on whose banks we camp) and shores Africa’s largest lake (Lake Victoria, which we fly over). Along its western flank are some of the highest peaks in Africa. That means its safari offerings can cover habitats ranging from tropical lowland rainforest to Afromontane forest, and from savannah grassland to acacia woodlands.
Chimps and gorillas are the main draw, understandably, but the great wonder is why more of those investing the time and expense to get here don’t stay longer, and explore more.
That was my plan, kicking off with Wildplaces’ Papa’s Bush Camp. Set within the wider Murchison Falls National Park, the six-bedroomed tented bush camp is within a protected ‘low impact zone’, meaning we have it to ourselves. It’s a place where poachers formerly trapped, and then speared to death, every living thing caught in their snares (the last gang here was caught because they were spotted doing their laundry in the river).
Today, we spend time fishing from the banks of the Nile, going on walking safaris, and learning about the native fauna and flora.
And the wildlife? Aside from the now resident, and wholly habituated pride of lions (whom we call on each morning and afternoon), we’re talking legions of hippos and buffalo, but also cuddly waterbuck, Ugandan kob and oribi (small antelope). There are warthogs, mongooses and Rothschild giraffes; the stately Jackson’s hartebeests, and the less-than-stately hyenas and baboons – the almost loveable rogues of the bush. Up in the trees, I spot vervets, red-tailed and colobus monkeys, the latter always appearing in coordinated pairs, like hair- sprayed backing singers in a cheesy funk band.
Some 300km south is Wildplaces’ River Station lodge. It’s within Kyambura Wildlife Reserve, on the banks of the chocka-croc Kazinga Channel, a wide, 32km-long natural water channel with the towering Rwenzori Mountains playing peekaboo out west.
So commanding are the near-panoramic sights from this stunning lodge, positioned where large mammals bathe in and drink from the channel, it makes you question the value of going out on safari at all. Why not just sit back and order another Kakira gin and tonic and peruse elephants, buffalo, hippos and colossal crocs? And yet game-driving the rich surrounding savannah habitat, set across a panoply of sunken volcanoes, never fails to deliver.
Soon after seeing those chimps, we’re on a journey further south, through the maroon soils of the Volcanic Highlands. From our exquisite, 2,000m-high Clouds lodge, we strike out for Gorilla Day. I’m like a five-year-old on Christmas morning.
There are just over 1,000 mountain gorillas left in the wild, with more than 400 living here in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, and within an hour, I am standing among a family of 15 – some within touching distance – peacefully grazing and ambling and farting all around me.
I feel overawed at it all and yet you can read them just as you would humans. Within a half hour, all hell lets loose when a neighbouring gorilla family have encroached and all troops charge to the battleline, with us in tow. It’s an exhilarating stand-off of flailing arms, bared teeth and soprano shrieks.
After a good half hour, however, tempers thaw, the invaders retreat, and my knees stop shaking. Good God: Uganda, the once-renowned Pearl of Africa, really does have it all.
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