Beyond the Game Drive

Beyond the game drive, an East African safari opens into chimpanzee trekking in Kibale, golden monkey treks in the Virunga volcanoes, boat safaris under Murchison Falls, balloon flights at first light, rhino tracking on foot and Batwa cultural trails. Most are booked as half day additions alongside a main route. They sit across Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania, in parks where forest, water and savannah run together.

What follows takes each of them one at a time, so you can work out which are worth a morning of your trip and which you can let go.

Chimpanzee Trekking Safaris in Kibale Forest

A chimpanzee trekking safari in Kibale Forest is the one most people add first, and it earns that. The forest holds somewhere near 1,500 chimpanzees across several fully habituated communities, along with a dozen other primate species. Briefing happens at Kanyanchu in the morning, with a second session in the afternoon. Groups are capped at six people with a ranger guide.

Tracking time runs anywhere from half an hour to three hours, depending on where the group moved overnight. Once you find them you get one hour. Chimps are loud and quick and rarely still, so this is less about quiet observation than about keeping up while a whole community feeds, argues and moves on.

Kibale also runs a full day chimpanzee habituation experience, where you go out with the researchers and rangers working with a community that is still getting used to people. It starts before dawn and can run until dusk. You spend up to four hours with the chimps rather than one. The trade off is a long day on your feet in wet forest, and less predictable viewing, since these are animals still deciding what to make of you. Minimum age for both is twelve.

Chimpanzee Tracking Safaris in Kyambura Gorge

Chimpanzee tracking in Kyambura Gorge is a different animal from Kibale, and worth knowing the difference before you book. The gorge cuts about eleven kilometres through the savannah of Queen Elizabeth National Park, roughly a hundred metres deep, with a river at the bottom and a strip of forest growing along it. Hippos and a few crocodiles live in that river. You walk down into it.

One habituated community lives here, and only six permits go out per session. Sightings are less dependable than Kibale, since the group sometimes ranges out of the gorge altogether. The descent and climb back are steep and slippery after rain. What you get in return is the oddity of the place: savannah above your head, closed forest below, chimp calls coming off the walls. If you are already spending nights in Queen Elizabeth, it slots into a morning without any extra driving.

Golden Monkey Trekking Safaris in the Virunga Volcanoes

Golden monkey trekking pairs naturally with a gorilla trek, and it is the gentler of the two by some margin. Golden monkeys are a subspecies of blue monkey found only in the Virunga range, orange across the back and flanks, and they live in the bamboo on the lower slopes. Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda holds two habituated troops, the larger one around the foot of Mount Sabyinyo with roughly eighty to a hundred members. Briefing is at Kinigi first thing.

Walking time is usually short. The bamboo zone sits low, so you are rarely climbing for long before the guides pick up movement overhead, and then you have an hour. The monkeys move fast and constantly, dropping bamboo shoots, crossing above you. Mgahinga in southwestern Uganda has two habituated troops of its own plus a four hour habituation option for people who want longer with them.

Boat Safaris Beneath Murchison Falls

The boat safari to the base of Murchison Falls runs upstream from the Paraa jetty on the Victoria Nile, about seventeen kilometres, and takes roughly three hours there and back. Morning and early afternoon sessions both run daily. Hippos are everywhere along the way. Crocodiles lie out on the sandbanks, elephants and buffalo come down to drink, and fish eagles work the shallows.

The boat noses in as close as the current allows, which is near enough to feel the spray. This is where the whole Nile forces itself through a gap in the rock only about seven metres wide and drops around forty metres. It is loud. You can also arrange to be dropped in the gorge and climb the trail to the top of the falls, then meet your vehicle up there and drive back through the park.

Nile Delta Boat Safaris and Shoebill Watching

The other Murchison boat safari runs downstream instead, twenty kilometres or more to where the Victoria Nile spreads out and empties into Lake Albert. It takes four to five hours, usually leaving Paraa around seven in the morning. Where the falls trip is about noise and force, the delta trip is slow, flat and quiet.

Birders take this one. The papyrus edges hold shoebill, papyrus gonolek and a long list of wetland species, and the sitatunga sometimes shows itself in the reeds. Shoebill sightings are good here but never certain. A useful trick is to go down by boat and come back overland through the Buligi game tracks, which turns one activity into most of a day.

Kazinga Channel Boat Safaris in Queen Elizabeth National Park

The Kazinga Channel boat safari is the one activity in Queen Elizabeth that almost nobody regrets. The channel is a natural waterway about thirty two kilometres long joining Lake George to Lake Edward, and it carries one of the densest hippo populations anywhere in Africa. Boats leave from near Mweya through the day and the cruise runs about two hours.

You will pass pods of thirty or forty hippos within a few metres. Buffalo stand in the shallows. Elephants come down in family groups and occasionally swim across, at which point the boat waits. Bird numbers on the channel are high enough that a two hour trip regularly turns up sixty or more species, among them pied and malachite kingfishers, African skimmers, pelicans and yellow billed storks. Afternoon sessions give the better light for photographs.

Hot Air Balloon Safaris Over the Plains

A hot air balloon safari is the one aerial way to see a park, and the Serengeti is where it works best. Pickup is somewhere between four and five in the morning, the flight itself lasts about an hour, and you land to a bush breakfast with sparkling wine. Balloons fly year round from near Seronera, seasonally from Ndutu during the calving months, from the Western Corridor mid year and from the north in the second half of the year. The Maasai Mara runs flights on much the same pattern.

Some plain talking is fair here. What you see from a balloon depends on where the wind takes you, and mornings vary. Flights are cancelled outright in strong wind or heavy rain, with refunds or a rebooking. Children under seven are not carried. Murchison Falls in Uganda has balloon flights launching near Paraa with around eight passengers per basket, though operations there have been on and off, so availability is worth confirming when you book rather than assuming.

Rhino Tracking Safaris on Foot at Ziwa

Rhino tracking on foot at Ziwa Rhino and Wildlife Ranch is the only place in Uganda you can walk up to a wild rhino, and it sits conveniently on the Gulu road about 176 kilometres north of Kampala, which is to say directly on the drive to Murchison Falls. The ranch runs to roughly seventy square kilometres of fenced savannah and woodland.

The project began with six southern white rhinos, four brought from Kenya and two from the United States. Breeding has taken the population past fifty, and rhinos from here have now been moved back into the wild at Ajai Wildlife Reserve in West Nile and at Kidepo Valley, the first time rhinos have been returned to Ugandan parks since poaching wiped them out. Rangers monitor every animal around the clock, so you drive to the general area, then walk the last part on foot and stand a short distance away while they graze. It takes one to two hours. Sightings are close to reliable, which is rare enough to say out loud.

Walking Safaris and Horseback Riding Tours in Lake Mburo

Lake Mburo is small, close to the Kampala road and one of the few Ugandan savannah parks where a walking safari with an armed ranger is permitted. No elephants for most of its history and no lions in numbers meant the rules could be looser. You walk among zebra, impala, eland, topi and warthog, which changes the scale of everything: on foot a zebra is a large animal, and you notice.

Mihingo Lodge holds the concession for horseback safaris inside the park, the only riding of its kind in the country. Rides run from an hour up to four or five hours out to the Warukiri hills in the middle of the park. Beginners walk; experienced riders can trot and canter. Helmets and chaps are provided, riders are weighed beforehand, and the working limit is somewhere around eighty five kilograms. Game moves differently around a horse than a vehicle, letting you get closer to zebra and eland than you might expect.

Night Game Drive Safaris After Dark

Only three Ugandan parks allow a night game drive safari: Queen Elizabeth, Murchison Falls and Lake Mburo. An armed ranger goes with you and works a spotlight from the vehicle. Drives start around half past six or seven in the evening and run two to three hours.

The list of what turns up is a different list from daylight: white tailed mongoose, genet, civet, bushbaby, porcupine, honey badger, side striped jackal. Leopard and lion are the hoped for sightings and the least likely ones. Plenty of nights produce nothing larger than a genet in a tree. Go for the change of register rather than a target species, take something warm, and treat any cat as a bonus.

Shoebill Canoe Tours in Mabamba Bay

Mabamba is a papyrus wetland of roughly a hundred square kilometres on Lake Victoria near Entebbe, protected under the Ramsar convention and run for tourism by the local community. A shoebill canoe tour here is the most dependable shoebill viewing in the country. Its name comes from emamba, the lungfish, which is what the shoebill hunts.

Boats leave from Nakiwogo landing site and cross about forty five minutes of open water before entering the channels, where the guides switch to poling so the canoe moves silently. Morning departures around seven work best. Total time is three to four hours. Shoebills are found on most trips, not all. Sitatunga, papyrus gonolek, blue swallow and lesser jacana come with the territory, and the wetland list runs past 260 species. Because it sits twenty minutes from the airport, this fits neatly into an arrival or departure day that would otherwise be dead time.

Batwa Cultural Trail Tours in Mgahinga and Bwindi

The Batwa lived as hunter gatherers in the forests now called Bwindi and Mgahinga for generations, and were moved out when the parks were gazetted for gorilla protection. The Batwa Trail in Mgahinga is guided by Batwa elders through part of that forest, running three to five hours: fire making, hunting technique, the plants used as medicine, and a stop at Garama Cave where the group sings. Bwindi runs its own version out of Buhoma, based in the community outside the forest edge, with more attention to how people live now.

Worth being straight about this one. Some travellers find it moving and some find it staged, and both reactions are reasonable. It reads better if you go in knowing the history rather than treating it as entertainment, and if you ask who actually receives the money. On the trails run properly, fees go to the guides directly and into a community fund for school costs.

Bigodi Wetland Walking Tours near Kibale

Five or six kilometres from the Kibale trailhead, the Bigodi wetland walk covers a four square kilometre swamp on boardwalks and forest paths, about four and a half kilometres over three hours. It is run by a local association, KAFRED, and the income has built classrooms and put several former poachers on the payroll as guides.

Eight primate species use the swamp, among them grey cheeked mangabey, red colobus, black and white colobus, L’Hoest’s and red tailed monkeys, and the bird list runs past two hundred with the great blue turaco as the headline act. Seeing primates is often easier here than inside the forest itself, where the canopy hides everything. Most people take it in the afternoon after a morning chimp trek. The name comes from the Rutooro word kugodya, meaning to walk wearily, which is what visitors did by the time they reached the place on foot.

Bush Dinners and Sundowner Stops on Safari

A bush dinner is a table set out somewhere away from the lodge, lit by lanterns and a fire, with dinner grilled on site. A sundowner is simpler still: the vehicle stops on a ridge or a river bank at the end of a drive, drinks come out of a cool box, and you stand about watching the light go. Neither is wildlife viewing. Both tend to be what people describe first when they get home.

Practicalities are easy. Most lodges want a day’s notice, some ask for minimum numbers, and everything depends on weather. The ones that work are the ones where the setting does the work, a bank above the Nile or the escarpment over the Kazinga Channel, rather than a candlelit table twenty metres from the restaurant.

Fitting These Experiences Into a Safari Route

Nearly all of these are half day activities, and the mistake is stacking too many. Two a day is plenty, and one is often better. Boat safaris pair with the same day’s game drive because the animals are down at the water anyway. Chimp trekking takes a morning and leaves you tired. A balloon flight needs a night in the right sector of the park, since pickup is before five.

Geography does most of the planning for you. Ziwa falls on the drive north to Murchison, so it becomes a stop rather than a detour. Mabamba works on an arrival or departure day out of Entebbe. Bigodi sits next to Kibale, golden monkeys next to the gorillas, Kyambura inside Queen Elizabeth. Permits for chimpanzee trekking and balloon seats both sell out in the busy months and want booking well ahead; boat cruises, night drives and community walks can usually be arranged a day or two out.

Common Questions About Safari Activities Beyond the Game Drive

A safari takes the shape you give it, and which of these are worth your time depends on what you actually enjoy. Ancient Africa Safaris is owner led and based in Uganda, and our guides run these routes through the year, so we can tell you plainly which activities repay the effort for you and which are better skipped. We will say when a balloon flight is the wrong use of a morning, and when it is the right one.

No hurry on any of it. When you are ready to talk it through, write to Ancient Africa Safaris and one of our team will reply to you in person.