Entebbe to Kidepo Valley
A scheduled light aircraft flight covers the distance to Kidepo Valley National Park in around two hours, a drive that would otherwise take most of a day, landing on the Narus airstrip in time for an afternoon game drive.
Twelve days built around Uganda’s wilder, harder-to-reach parks, starting with a fly-in to Kidepo Valley in the far north-east, one of the continent’s most remote and least visited national parks, before working south through Murchison, Kibale and Bwindi.
Internal flights cut two long drives out of the itinerary, so more of the twelve days go to the parks themselves rather than the roads between them.
A scheduled light aircraft flight covers the distance to Kidepo Valley National Park in around two hours, a drive that would otherwise take most of a day, landing on the Narus airstrip in time for an afternoon game drive.
Game drives across the Narus Valley bring sightings of buffalo, zebra, and the park’s more unusual residents, including cheetah and bat-eared fox, while a visit to a Karamojong homestead offers insight into the semi-nomadic cattle-keeping culture of the region.
A further light aircraft flight crosses from Kidepo to Murchison Falls National Park, exchanging Kidepo’s dry savannah for the Nile’s wide, game-rich floodplain.
A launch trip to the base of the Falls, where the Nile narrows to force its way through a rock gap, is followed by a morning chimpanzee trek in the nearby Budongo Forest Reserve, one of Uganda’s largest natural forests.
The drive south crosses the Albertine escarpment via Hoima and Fort Portal, trading Murchison’s open savannah for Kibale’s dense, high-canopy forest.
A guided trek through Kibale’s interior follows a habituated chimpanzee community, with sightings usually including feeding, grooming and the calling that carries across the forest canopy.
The road south reaches Queen Elizabeth National Park by early afternoon, in time for a boat cruise along the Kazinga Channel, where hippo and buffalo gather along both banks.
The drive south through Ishasha’s tree-climbing lion territory continues into Bwindi’s forested hills, where the following morning is given over to a guided trek and an hour with a habituated gorilla family.
A flight from Kihihi or a drive north returns you towards Entebbe, closing a route that has covered the length of the country from the Karamoja plains to the gorilla highlands.
This is a starting point, not a fixed departure. Tell us your dates, pace and interests and we will reshape it around you.
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