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Planning notes, destination ideas and safari inspiration from the Rift & Tide Africa team.
Get safari planning ideas, destination notes and occasional offers.
Nairobi-based East Africa safari specialists for tailor-made journeys, beach escapes, and trade-ready planning.
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Planning notes, destination ideas and safari inspiration from the Rift & Tide Africa team.
Get safari planning ideas, destination notes and occasional offers.
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Private Tailor Made Tour
Adventure travellers like to get off the grid and traditionally explore unknown regions without really throwing away what is possible with modern civilization. We make it possible with this Uganda walking safari package.
Walking off the beaten path in southwestern Uganda on this 8-day safari expedition gives you an opportunity to explore the Pearl of Africa's gorgeous rural landscape on foot. On this trip, you get to meet unknown people and appreciate their ancient cultures and the ethereal mountain gorillas that occupy only this tiny part of the world. Since mountain gorillas are endangered, an opportunity for a gorilla trek could happen only once for you. Ever!
You fly to Kisoro from Entebbe on one of the available scheduled domestic flights and immediately get your boots some action on the first day. Take a two-hour walk through communities and garden slopes to a volcano lake for the dug-out canoe adventure. You spend a night at the base of the Virunga volcanos on the enchanting lake's shores.
For Rift & Tide Africa, this journey works as a polished starting point for private travellers and travel advisors who want a clear, premium East Africa itinerary. Final routing, lodge level, rooming, permits and special interests can be refined at quotation stage so the trip fits the traveller's dates, comfort level and pace.
Travel and accommodation
8 Days / 7 Nights, 1 country, Arrival in Entebbe to Entebbe
7 nights accommodation
Meals
Meals as per day-by-day itinerary
Safari style
The Primate Collection
Private Tailor Made
Itinerary
7 stops across the route
Trip code: RTT-PRM007
Starting from
Price on request
Public retail pricing. Final quote confirms availability and inclusions.
Request quoteWhy this trip
Route notes
FAQs
Answers are general public guidance. Your final itinerary, inclusions, pricing, and supplier conditions are confirmed during quotation.
Public prices are indicative retail guidance. Availability, seasonal adjustments, rooming, and final inclusions are confirmed when the team prepares your quote.
Many scheduled routes can be adapted with lodge, timing, or extension changes depending on availability and supplier rules.
Share travel dates, traveller count, rooming preferences, gateway city, and any must-see destinations or experiences so the team can respond efficiently.
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Keep exploring
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Entebbe
private tailor made
Virunga Highlands Expedition is a 8-day Uganda and Rwanda journey designed around refined pacing, meaningful wildlife encounters and carefully selected lodges, with a route shaped around Entebbe, Lake Victoria, Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Bwindi.
8 Days / 7 Nights
Price on request
Plan this journey
Ask Rift & Tide Africa to shape Highlands, Forests & Gorillas around your travel dates, preferred lodge level, permits and pace.
Trip route
Follow the day-by-day flow of this itinerary across East Africa.
Entebbe International Airport
Day 01: Arrival in Entebbe & Shoebill Tracking
Bwindi Impenetrable National Park
Day 02: Fly from Entebbe to Kisoro & Lake Mutanda Canoeing
Mapped stop
Day 03: Mutanda - Nkuringo Walking Trail
Day 04: Stay in - Optional Activities
Day 05: The Gorilla Trek
Day 06: Hiking Across Bwindi Impenetrable Forest
Day 07: Mahogany Springs Lodge
Entebbe International Airport
Day 08: Fly from Kihihi to Entebbe
Itinerary
Our driver will pick you up from Entebbe International airport (15 minutes) and check you in at your hotel within Entebbe. You will meet with your trip specialist for a briefing just before dinner.
Otherwise, there are optional activities around Entebbe for those who arrive early and want to stay active. For example, bird-watchers can visit the world-renowned botanical gardens or Mabamba swamps to meet the prehistoric shoebill. You can take a quiet walk to the local markets or shop at the modern malls.
Stay: Boutique Hotel Number 5 (Luxury) or Papyrus Guesthouse (Comfortable)
You will be up early and catch a one-hour domestic flight from Entebbe to Kisoro airport at 7:30 am. Kisoro airport is just outside Bwindi Impenetrable National Park's south side. A driver will pick you up and transfer you to where the village walking experience starts.
The trail will take about 45 minutes between Kisoro Town and follows village footpaths through remarkable scenery with incredible views of cultivated mountain slopes, rainforests, and human settlements.
Along your hike through village paths, you meet fascinating people and learn powerful knowledge of local people's daily lives. Many children and local people will greet us as they tend their fields and livestock and collect water from local springs.
Stay details available on request.
Stay details available on request.
Stay details available on request.
Stay details available on request.
Stay details available on request.
Stay details available on request.
Featured stays
Specific lodges, rooms and camps are subject to availability. Where a named stay is unavailable, Rift & Tide Africa will recommend a property of comparable character, location and comfort level before confirmation.
Inclusions & Exclusions
Departures
Contact us for current departure dates and quotation-stage availability.
Good to know
private tailor made
Rwenzori Summit Challenge is a 9-day Uganda journey designed around refined pacing, meaningful wildlife encounters and carefully selected lodges, with a route shaped around Entebbe, Rwenzori Mountains.
9 Days / 8 Nights
Price on request
Entebbe
private tailor made
Rwenzori Foothills Trek is a 5-day Uganda journey designed around refined pacing, meaningful wildlife encounters and carefully selected lodges, with a route shaped around Entebbe, Rwenzori Mountains.
5 Days / 4 Nights
Price on request
The path will take you to the edge of Lake Mutanda's calm waters, where you will meet the fishermen and boat traditional dug-out canoes. You continue in a northerly direction in dug-out canoes with tales from your guide and the chants from fishermen. The 2.5-hour canoeing journey is not just a ride, but the healing calmness of the enchanting landscape, water, rowers, and sound is unmissable. The local lives around the lake will cross your boat trail with fishers checking their nets, people taking produce to market by canoe, and others cutting reeds for creativity and construction.
You will disembark at Mutanda Lake Resort docks, where you will check in, have lunch and freshen up for a dreamy evening. At the beach cottages, you can view a cross-section of the Virunga mountains with their dark blue sunset reflection off the lake.
This relaxed Dutch-owned resort has luxury chalets raise off a wooden platform with lovely porches and polished wooden floorboards plonking directly on the lake in a superb location.
Stay: Mutanda Lake Resort
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner.
There is 19 kilometers of walking trail between Mutanda Lake Resort and Nkuringo Bwindi Gorilla Lodge, your next destination.
You will walk the trail within 2-3 hours if you are thirsting for more rural landscape trekking. Twirling across terraced garden slopes, homes, dusty roads, and up and down hills, the trail leaves no mountainous landscape views to imagination. It is perfect for the adventurer in you.
If you are not up to another walk, your driver will pick you up in the later breakfast hours and drive up the mountains to Nkuringo Bwindi Gorilla Lodge. He can also cut the trail shorter for some who prefer a less strenuous walk.
In the evening, a few hours before sundown, you will join the Batwa elders on a 2-mile forest trail as they showcase their ancient forest cultures, medicines, and entertainment. They used to live in the rainforest with the gorillas, and now all they can do is show you how they used to live as a way of keeping their cultures alive. It is quite entertaining.
Stay: Nkuringo Bwindi Gorilla Lodge
Meals: Full Board.
There are a couple of activities to hype you up for the gorilla trek the following morning.
Many travellers stay back at their cottage and hang out with others while marveling at the glamorous views across the mountainous rift valley region at a 7,000-ft (2400 meters) elevation. Drink some Cognac, Whisky, or South African wines at the bar, meet the chef for insider local recipes or make friends with locals for unguided indigenous storytelling.
Visit the local shaman, or traditional healer, who will take you through his nature lab and show you how humanity lived for more than 70,000 years without modern medicine.
Take the Suma waterfall village trail if you still have that off-the-beaten-track walking energy with you. It is about 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) through valley villages, ranches, and gardens on steep slopes. The 7-meter falls are located on the edge of Suma village and feed a river that snakes through the village into the rainforest jungle. You will be dazzled by the aerial view of the community from the entrance on a ridge.
There are other activities to keep you on your toes.
Go to the 'Top of the World' - Experience a 360° view of the entire
rural landscape on a sundowner picnic.
Visit a local school or clinic
Observe the making of local beer and gin
Visit a homestead to sample some local foods
See the local blacksmith at work
Visit the women's craft centre
Enjoy dances performed by the youth group
Stay: Nkuringo Bwindi Gorilla Lodge
Meals: Full Board
It will be an early start of another active day; you must be up by 7:00 am, have breakfast, get your lunch pack, and check your gear. Your private driver will have you at the briefing point before 7:30 am. gorilla trekking starts at about 8:00 am, irrespective of the weather and group size.
You may take almost the better part of the day in the jungle, but definitely more time tracking the mountain gorillas than watching them. You have about one hour to watch the dark-furred giant beasts staying 10 meters away from them. But sometimes they come closer, and you must follow the rules of the jungle.
The time you spend with the great apes will greatly compensate for all the jungle hiking that challenges your body fitness. I recommend you work out for a few days before you come.
You will be out of there relatively by 2:00 pm; you will have lunch somewhere in the jungle and get back to your cottage for the evening. Take advantage of the after-dinner talk in the lounge.
Stay: Nkuringo Bwindi Gorilla Lodge
Meals: Full Board.
You will get on the trail at about 8:30 am after a short briefing with your walking safari guide at the lodge. You must hit the trails in the misty early morning hours so that the intense afternoon sunrays find you under the jungle canopy. You will travel with a local guide and two armed rangers for security. Go light; just your backpack with lunch, a camera, and walking. It takes about 4-5 hours to walk the trail.
Two trails meet somewhere in the jungle and meander down to Buhoma town; you will have to select one. The longer one takes about six plus meanders along the Kashasha river and over several ridges. The shorter one starts at Kashasha River, down Nteko valley, and meanders along Ivy River. You must drive about 15 kilometers to Nteko village to start the Ivy River Trail. However, both trails deliver the same jolt of adventure for intrepid travellers.
The richness of this UNESCO World Heritage site and the benefits of walking in an untamed rainforest to your health is just enough to lure you to this Uganda gorillas & wildlife safari package. The local walking guide will be your connection to this impenetrable jungle, with occasional sightings of prominent inhabitants like chimpanzees, forest elephants, birds, monkeys, and butterflies.
On the other side, you will check in a forest cottage in Mahogany Springs Lodge, in the spring valley overlooking the Bwindi, now a penetrable forest.
Stay: Mahogany Springs Lodge
Meals: Full Board.
You will spend the day at Mahogany Springs Lodge with a few joyful activities, village walks, and a visit to the Ride4AWoman creative studio for local women.
Mahogany Springs lodge enjoys relaxing views across the forest canopy for a quiet stay at the cottage balcony.
Mahogany Springs Lodge promises its guests privacy and serenity blended with optimal comfort in a spectacular natural setting overlooking Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. It spreads on the banks of the Muyanja river, which flows through the jungle.
The exotic gardens and intricately designed stone pathways leading to the river invite you to explore every corner of this magical place, uncovering the various surprises along garden trails, such as the homegrown vegetable garden.
Meals: Full Board
You will catch an 8:00 am domestic flight from Kihihi airport (an hour's drive from Buhoma) to Entebbe International airport on the shores of Lake Victoria. The flight takes about an hour, flying over Uganda's most beautiful landscapes and Lake Victoria.
Optional Accommodation Papyrus Guesthouse Meals: Breakfast, Lunch (Packed), Dinner
