Day-by-day itinerary

What the operator has planned, day by day, across 3 days.

1. Day 1

   Transfer to Kibale Forest National Park

   The guest is collected from a hotel or on landing at the airport and driven west by way of Mubende, with a lunch stop in Fort Portal. From there it is either straight to the lodge to check in, or straight out to the crater lakes for an afternoon on foot, whichever the guest prefers. Ancient Africa also offers the flight from Entebbe to Kasese airstrip for anyone who would rather not spend about six hours on the road. Dinner and an early night follow, because the habituation starts before dawn.

2. Day 2

   Chimpanzee habituation and the Bigodi swamp

   Early breakfast, a packed lunch, and a transfer to the headquarters for the briefing before going into the forest with an experienced ranger. Ancient Africa publishes the habituation group as a maximum of four people including the guide and the researchers, and the day begins where the family nested the night before. The hours after that go on watching them feed, hunt, mind their young, patrol their range and eventually build the next set of nests, with L'Hoest's monkeys, black and white colobus and forest hogs in the same forest. The late afternoon is a guided walk in the Bigodi swamp, one of the better birding spots in the country, where hornbills, black-headed gonolek, kingfishers, weavers, waxbills, cuckoos and flycatchers are all named on the operator's own list. A village walk afterwards takes in the community projects: basket making, banana beer and coffee.

3. Day 3

   Chimpanzee tracking and return to Kampala or Entebbe

   The last morning is the standard track, and it visits a different family, one that will be seen at a distance because it has not been habituated in the way the first one has. Groups are kept to no more than eight and the trek runs three to four hours. Afterwards the party drives back to Kampala or Entebbe, with lunch on the road.