12 Day Uganda Rwanda Tanzania Safari: Two Gorilla Treks and the Serengeti
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12 Days
Wildlife, Gorillas, Chimpanzees & the Best of Uganda
Itinerary ref: UG-007
This best of Uganda safari covers five national parks in ten days. In one loop, you visit Murchison Falls, Kibale Forest, Queen Elizabeth, Bwindi and Lake Mburo. You cruise the Nile to the base of the falls, look for chimpanzees and search for tree-climbing lions. In addition, you can add a mountain gorilla trek in Bwindi. It is a full Uganda circuit for travellers who want wildlife, primates, lakes and local culture in a single trip.
We are a Uganda-based team, and our guides have more than 12 years of experience leading tours. For background on the country, read our Uganda destination guide.
The route moves in a steady loop. From Entebbe, it runs north to the Nile, then west and southwest, and back east to Entebbe. Each day has one clear highlight, so you spend your time exploring rather than only driving. A private safari vehicle and an English-speaking driver-guide stay with you from start to finish.
The trip is 10 days and 9 nights. However, the gorilla trek and the chimpanzee tracking are optional extras with their own permits. As a result, you decide what to add. If you want gorillas as the centrepiece, see our Uganda national parks safari.
On day one, we meet you at Entebbe airport and transfer you along Lake Victoria to your hotel. On day two, you drive north for Ziwa rhino tracking at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary. It is the only place in Uganda where you can track rhinos on foot with a ranger. You then continue to Murchison Falls National Park and visit the top of the falls.
Day three is a full day at Murchison Falls. First, you take a morning game drive in the northern sector. Buffalo, elephant, Uganda kob and Rothschild's giraffe are common here, and lions are possible. In the afternoon, you take a Nile boat cruise toward the base of the falls. You then finish with an evening game drive. Sightings are never guaranteed, but this is one of the richest wildlife days of your best of Uganda safari.
On day four, you drive to Kibale Forest via Fort Portal. On the way, you pass tea estates and, on a clear day, see the Rwenzori Mountains. In the afternoon, you take a nature walk and community visit at the Bigodi Wetland Sanctuary. On day five, you can add optional Kibale chimpanzee tracking. You walk with a guide after a park briefing, and the chimpanzee permit is an extra. For help choosing between forests, read our complete guide to gorilla and chimpanzee trekking in Uganda.
After tracking, you continue to Queen Elizabeth National Park and visit the salt-mining community at Lake Katwe. On day six, you take an early Kasenyi game drive on the plains. It is one of the more dependable places in the park to look for lions. Later, you take a Kazinga Channel boat cruise. Hippos, buffalo, crocodiles and many water birds come close to the shore.
On day seven, you drive south to the Ishasha sector of Queen Elizabeth National Park. Ishasha is one of only a few places in the world where lions climb trees. Sightings are never guaranteed, and we explain what to expect for your dates. You then continue to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest for the night.
On day eight, you can add optional Bwindi gorilla trekking. A guide briefs you at the park office, and you walk with trackers and rangers to a habituated gorilla family. You spend one hour with the gorillas, and you keep a safe distance and use no flash. The gorilla permit is an optional extra, so you need to book it well ahead. For permit information, visit the Uganda Wildlife Authority website. After the trek, you continue to Lake Bunyonyi to relax.
On day nine, you enjoy Lake Bunyonyi canoeing, a relaxed trip among the islands. Meanwhile, your guide shares the local stories of each island. You then drive toward Lake Mburo. Along the way, you stop for lunch at the Igongo Cultural Centre to learn about the traditions of south-western Uganda. On arrival, you take an evening game drive.
On day ten, you take a Lake Mburo walking safari in the morning, inside Lake Mburo National Park. Predators are fewer here than in the larger parks, so you can approach zebra, impala and eland on foot. After that, you drive back to Entebbe and stop at the Equator crossing. Finally, we transfer you to the airport for your flight.
You stay at a hotel near Entebbe on the first night, then at one lodge or camp near each park. In addition, you can choose from our Classic Comfort, Premium or Ultra-Luxury levels. We then confirm the exact properties for your dates in your quote. For photos and details, see our lodges page.
Your best of Uganda safari includes nine nights of accommodation and the activities listed in the day-by-day plan. It also covers ground transport in a private safari vehicle with an English-speaking driver-guide. Meals are as listed for each day, and the price also covers taxes and VAT. We confirm the full meal plan in your quote.
The price does not include international and domestic flights, extra nights before or after the trip, gratuities or personal expenses. Visa fees and the optional gorilla and chimpanzee permits are also extra. Travel insurance is mandatory, and we need proof before you travel. Guides who speak other languages are available at an extra cost. Please check visa and travel documents before you go.
It is a good fit if you want a wide mix of Uganda in ten days, with wildlife, primates and culture. It suits couples, families and small groups who are happy with long drives between parks. If you want more primates, see our Uganda primates safari. Alternatively, for a shorter trip with rafting, see our gorilla trek and Nile adventure. Similarly, if you would like to add Rwanda and the Serengeti, our 12-day Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania safari includes two gorilla treks. If you are new to safaris, our first-time safari planning guide will help.
Is the gorilla trek included? No. It is an optional extra on day eight, and we book the permit separately. We confirm availability for your dates in your quote.
Is chimpanzee tracking included? No. It is optional on day five, and the permit is an extra.
Tell us your dates and who is travelling. We will then shape your best of Uganda safari around you and confirm every detail in your quote.
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Sign in to save this itineraryYour Ugandan adventure begins the moment you step off the plane at Entebbe International Airport, where a Paramount Gorilla Expeditions representative will be waiting to welcome you and take care of every detail from there. There is no queue to navigate alone and no logistics to puzzle out after a long flight — just a friendly face holding a sign with your name, ready to see you comfortably settled.
From the airport you will be driven along the shores of Lake Victoria, Africa's largest lake, to your hotel for the night. It is a short, easy transfer, deliberately built into the first day so that you can rest, freshen up, and let the excitement of the days ahead settle in before an early start tomorrow. Dinner and an overnight stay round out your first taste of Uganda, the country travellers and conservationists alike have long nicknamed “the Pearl of Africa.”
An early breakfast at 6:30 am sets the tone for a day of real adventure. After checking out, you will begin the drive north to Murchison Falls National Park, breaking the journey at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary — the only place in Uganda where you can track rhinos on foot. Southern white rhinos were hunted to local extinction in Uganda during decades of civil unrest, and Ziwa exists to reverse that: a dedicated sanctuary breeding rhinos in a protected, semi-wild setting with the long-term goal of one day releasing their offspring back into Uganda's national parks. With an experienced ranger guide leading the way, you will approach these gentle giants on foot and spend a full hour observing them at remarkably close range — an encounter that puts the scale and quiet power of a rhino into a perspective no vehicle window can match.
After a relaxed lunch, the drive continues on to Murchison Falls National Park itself, Uganda's largest protected area. Before settling into your lodge, you will visit the falls that give the park its name: here, the mighty River Nile, which has flowed wide and calm all the way from Lake Victoria, is suddenly forced through a gorge barely seven metres across. The result is one of the most dramatic sights on the entire river — a thunderous, churning column of whitewater dropping into the pool below with a violence and volume that is felt as much as seen. Photographs rarely do it justice; standing at the viewpoint, with the spray drifting up and the roar filling the air, usually does. From here, it is a short drive to your lodge for dinner and a well-earned overnight stay.
Today belongs entirely to Murchison Falls' wildlife, and it starts before sunrise. With a cup of coffee and a packed breakfast, you will head into the park's northern sector for a game drive timed to catch the cooler hours of the morning, when animals are at their most active. This stretch of savannah is home to Cape buffalo, elephant, Uganda kob, Jackson's hartebeest, Rothschild's giraffe — an endangered subspecies for which Murchison is one of Africa's most important strongholds — oribi, common warthog, several primate species, and lion; on a fortunate morning, a leopard may make an appearance too. Midway through the drive you will pause to properly enjoy your full breakfast out in the bush before continuing to explore deeper into the park.
By early afternoon you will head back for lunch before making your way to the Paraa launch site for one of Murchison's signature experiences: an afternoon boat cruise upstream along the Victoria Nile. The boat brings you steadily closer to the base of the falls, stopping just short of what is known as the “Devil's Cauldron” — the turbulent pool where the Nile crashes down through that same narrow gorge — for a view of the falls found nowhere else. Along the way, hippos and Nile crocodiles line the banks and shallows in large numbers, while the birdlife is exceptional even by Uganda's high standards: keep an eye out for the Egyptian goose, goliath heron, malachite and pied kingfishers, colourful bee-eaters, the outsized silhouette of the hornbill, and cormorants drying their wings on midstream rocks.
As the light softens, you will head out once more for an evening game drive — often the most rewarding of the day, since many of the park's more elusive residents become active as the heat fades. This is prime time to encounter lion, leopard, porcupine, civet, and spotted hyena, along with hippos grazing on land after a day submerged in the river; with real luck, you may even witness a hunt in progress, one of the rawest and most memorable experiences the African bush has to offer. You will return to the lodge for dinner and overnight, having covered Murchison Falls National Park about as thoroughly as a single day allows.
After a hearty breakfast, you will check out and begin an overland journey that is as scenic as it is transformative — tracing a route back across the Nile and steadily south-west toward Kibale Forest National Park. The landscape changes dramatically along the way: rolling tea estates carpet the hillsides in an almost impossibly uniform green, patches of natural forest appear and recede, and on a clear day the jagged, cloud-wrapped silhouette of the Rwenzori Mountains — the legendary “Mountains of the Moon” — rises in the distance, forming a striking backdrop to the volcanic landscape below.
You will break the journey in Fort Portal, one of Uganda's most attractive towns, for lunch and a short walk to stretch your legs and take in the local atmosphere before continuing on to check in at your lodge. In the afternoon, the day's second highlight awaits at Bigodi Wetland Sanctuary, a community-run reserve bordering Kibale Forest. Your guided walk winds through the wetland and into the neighbouring community, giving you a genuine sense of how local people live alongside the forest's wildlife rather than apart from it — without relying on modern conveniences most travellers take for granted. Along the way, you will have the chance to see traditional daily activities in action, from distilling banana gin and roasting coffee to local arts and crafts, before returning to your lodge to relax ahead of dinner and an overnight stay.
This morning offers one of Uganda's most sought-after primate encounters: an optional chimpanzee tracking excursion in Kibale Forest, home to one of the highest densities of primates anywhere in Africa. After breakfast, you will meet your guide and head to the park information office for a briefing on how to behave respectfully around wild chimpanzees before setting off on a guided forest walk in search of them. Chimpanzees share roughly 98.8% of their DNA with humans, and it shows the moment you find a group — their expressions, social dynamics, and even their squabbles feel startlingly familiar. Along the way you may also encounter other forest residents, from additional primate species to bush pig and a rich variety of birdlife. Once you locate the chimpanzees, you will spend a full hour watching them move through the canopy, feed, and care for their young, with plenty of time for photographs.
After lunch, you will continue the drive to Queen Elizabeth National Park, pausing en route at the Katwe salt mining community on the shores of Lake Katwe — a crater lake so saline that almost nothing grows in it, and around which an entire local economy has been built. Salt has been extracted from these waters by hand since at least the 16th century, using methods passed down through generations largely unchanged by modern industry. You will have the chance to see — and even try your hand at — the salt-mining process yourself, while your local guide explains how the community has sustained this remarkable trade for hundreds of years. From there, it is a short drive to your lodge, where the rest of the evening is yours to relax before dinner.
An early start takes you out to the Kasenyi plains, one of Queen Elizabeth National Park's most reliable game-viewing areas, for a morning drive in search of leopard, lion, elephant, Uganda kob, waterbuck, buffalo, bushbuck, warthog, spotted hyena, bush pig, and a wide variety of birdlife drawn to the open grassland. Kasenyi's flat, expansive terrain makes for excellent visibility, and it is one of the more dependable spots in the park for a lion sighting.
You will return to the lodge for lunch and some time to relax before the afternoon's centrepiece: a boat cruise along the Kazinga Channel, the natural waterway that links Lake George to Lake Edward and forms the beating heart of the park's ecosystem. Regularly ranked among Uganda's most rewarding wildlife experiences, the cruise brings you closer than almost any other activity in the country to hippos in their hundreds, basking Nile crocodiles, elephants and buffalo coming down to drink at the water's edge, and a constant procession of water birds along the banks. As the boat glides along the channel, it becomes clear why this stretch of water is so often described as one of the greatest wildlife-viewing corridors in East Africa. You will return to the lodge afterward to unwind, with dinner and an overnight stay to close out the day.
After breakfast, you will head south to the Ishasha sector of Queen Elizabeth National Park — one of only a handful of places on Earth where lions have taken to climbing trees, a behaviour scientists still debate the exact reason for, whether escaping biting insects, catching a cooling breeze, or simply gaining a better vantage point over the plains. Spotting a lion draped languidly along a fig tree branch is one of Uganda's most photographed, and most memorable, wildlife moments. Ishasha's game drive also turns up leopard, elephant, buffalo, several antelope species, and primates as you make your way through the sector.
From Ishasha, the journey continues toward Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park, arriving in the evening in time for dinner and an overnight stay. Bwindi's name is well earned — as you approach, the forest itself begins to close in around the road, dense, ancient, and alive with sound, a fitting entry point to the encounter awaiting you tomorrow.
This is the day many travellers build their entire Uganda trip around. Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, protects roughly half of the world's remaining population of mountain gorillas — making this single forest one of the most important pieces of ground on the planet for the species' survival. After a substantial breakfast and with packed lunches and plenty of drinking water in hand, you will meet your guide for a briefing at the park office before setting off on foot into the forest, tracking a habituated gorilla family alongside experienced trackers and rangers.
The trek itself is part of the experience — through dense vegetation, over uneven, often steep terrain — but the moment you find the family, all of that falls away. You will spend a full hour in their company, watching playful youngsters tumble over one another, mothers grooming their babies with evident tenderness, and the family's silverback quietly surveying the group, calm but unmistakably alert, ready to protect his family at the first sign of a threat. It is widely described as one of the most profound wildlife encounters on Earth, and an hour that tends to stay with people long after they've left Uganda behind.
Afterward, you will head to Lake Bunyonyi to unwind, with a boat canoeing safari on its calm waters offering a gentle, scenic close to an unforgettable day. Dinner and an overnight stay at the lakeshore round things off.
There is no need to rush this morning. After breakfast at your own pace, you will set out on a boat canoeing safari across Lake Bunyonyi, exploring several of its 29 islands. Each island carries its own local legend, and your guide will share these stories as you paddle past — tales that range from the whimsical to the genuinely haunting, part of the rich oral history this region is known for.
From the lake, the journey turns toward Lake Mburo National Park, with a stop along the way at the Igongo Cultural Centre for lunch and a glimpse into the traditions of south-western Uganda's communities. On arrival at the park, you will check in at your lodge before heading straight out for an evening game drive. Lake Mburo has a very different character from the parks you've visited so far — smaller, drier, and dotted with acacia woodland — and its species list reflects that: spotted hyena, leopard, civet, African rock python, porcupine, bush baby, zebra, impala, eland, topi, several other antelope species, warthog, Cape buffalo, and giraffe are all possible sightings as the light fades. You will return to the lodge for dinner and a final overnight stay in the bush.
Your last morning in the wild begins with an early breakfast and bags loaded into the vehicle, followed by one final, distinctive experience: a walking safari inside Lake Mburo National Park. Because Mburo has a much lower predator density than Uganda's larger parks, it is one of the very few places in the country where walking safaris are permitted — letting you approach zebra, impala, and the more skittish eland on foot, at a pace and proximity no vehicle allows.
From the park, the drive back to Entebbe includes a stop at the Uganda Equator crossing, where you can stand with one foot in each hemisphere, take in a simple water-displacement demonstration of the equator's effect, enjoy lunch, and browse a selection of craft stalls for souvenirs made by local Ugandan artisans. From there, it's on to Entebbe International Airport to check in for your flight home — with, we hope, a phone full of photographs and a few stories that will take some time to fully tell.
Built from our own staff's real packing guidance for this trip's destinations, tailored to your dates and this exact itinerary above.
Gorilla trekking in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest
Chimpanzee trekking in Kibale Forest
Big-game safaris in Murchison Falls, Queen Elizabeth and Lake Mburo
Boat safari on the Nile to the base of Murchison Falls
Wildlife viewing in Lake Mburo National Park
Scenic relaxation at Lake Bunyonyi
Explore Uganda's diverse forests, savannahs and landscapes
Stay in carefully selected safari lodges and resorts
Experience Uganda's wildlife, landscapes and local culture in one journey
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