Best of Kenya & Uganda — Wildlife & Gorillas — 11 Days

Day-by-day itinerary

1. 1

   Arrival in Nairobi

   Your AECONS representative meets you at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and transfers you to your hotel in Nairobi. The evening is free to rest and acclimatise after your international flight. Your guide briefs you on the days ahead over a welcome dinner, setting the scene for the landscapes and wildlife you will encounter across Kenya and Uganda.

   🏨 Nairobi Hotel (e.g. Tribe Hotel or similar) 🍽 D
2. 2

   Nairobi to Lake Nakuru National Park

   After an early breakfast you depart Nairobi heading northwest on the B3, climbing through the Rift Valley escarpment with sweeping views across the valley floor. Lake Nakuru National Park, a UNESCO-listed Biosphere Reserve, receives you by mid-morning — your first game drive immediately reveals white and black rhino, Rothschild's giraffe, and the shimmering pink edge of lesser flamingos feeding in the alkaline shallows. An afternoon drive extends deep into the acacia and euphorbia woodland where leopard and waterbuck are regularly sighted.

   🏨 Sarova Lion Hill Game Lodge or similar 🍽 B, L, D
3. 3

   Lake Nakuru to Maasai Mara

   A full morning game drive in Nakuru captures the golden light on the lake before you head south via Narok, descending from highland tea country onto the vast short-grass plains of the Maasai Mara ecosystem. The drive itself is a gentle introduction to Mara landscapes — you may spot your first topi and Thomson's gazelle herds from the vehicle before reaching your camp in time for a late lunch. An evening game drive ventures into the Mara Triangle or central plains as the setting sun turns the savannah amber.

   🏨 Basecamp Masai Mara or similar tented camp 🍽 B, L, D
4. 4

   Full Day in the Maasai Mara — Big Cats & Plains Game

   A full day devoted to the greatest wildlife stage in Africa. You depart before sunrise for the prime hours when predators are most active — lion prides patrolling their territory, cheetahs scanning the plains from termite mounds, and spotted hyenas returning from nocturnal hunts. The Mara River crossing points see wildebeest and zebra massing in their hundreds during the migration season (July–October). Afternoon drives explore the Musiara Marsh and the riverine forest fringe, rich in elephant, buffalo and forest-dwelling birds, before returning to camp for sundowners under a vast African sky.

   🏨 Basecamp Masai Mara or similar tented camp 🍽 B, L, D
5. 5

   Maasai Mara Morning Drive & Fly to Entebbe

   A final dawn game drive in the Mara makes the most of the early light before you transfer to the Mara airstrip for a scheduled flight to Nairobi Wilson Airport and onward connection to Entebbe International Airport in Uganda. Your Uganda guide meets you on arrival and transfers you northward toward Kibale, stopping en route for dinner and an overnight rest in the Fort Portal area, the gateway to Uganda's primate forests.

   🏨 Chimpanzee Forest Guest House or similar, Fort Portal area 🍽 B, D
6. 6

   Kibale National Park — Chimpanzee Trekking

   Kibale Forest National Park protects one of Africa's richest primate habitats, home to over 1,500 chimpanzees alongside 12 other primate species. After an early briefing at the park headquarters at Kanyanchu, you enter the forest on foot with a ranger-guide. Chimpanzees are habituated to human presence and the trek — which can last one to three hours depending on where the group has ranged — delivers extraordinary close-range sightings: chimps grooming, feeding on figs, and calling across the canopy. The afternoon offers an optional 'Primate Walk' to encounter red colobus, L'Hoest's monkeys and grey-cheeked mangabeys.

   🏨 Primate Lodge Kibale or Turaco Treetops 🍽 B, L, D
7. 7

   Kibale to Queen Elizabeth National Park via Crater Lakes

   The drive south from Fort Portal takes you through Uganda's scenic crater lake district — a chain of jade-green lakes nestled in ancient volcanic craters, framed by terraced hillsides and tea estates. Arriving in Queen Elizabeth National Park, you begin afternoon game drives across the Kasenyi Plains, where large buffalo herds attract lion prides and the open floodplains host Uganda kob performing their impressive rutting displays. The park's landscape shifts dramatically between open savannah, Rift Valley escarpment and papyrus-fringed channels.

   🏨 Mweya Safari Lodge or Jacana Safari Lodge 🍽 B, L, D
8. 8

   Queen Elizabeth NP — Kazinga Channel Cruise & Ishasha

   Morning brings a boat cruise on the Kazinga Channel, a 32-kilometre natural waterway linking Lake George and Lake Edward. Hippos lounge in the shallows at close range, enormous Nile crocodiles bask on mudflats, and the channel banks are alive with African fish eagles, goliath herons and malachite kingfishers. In the afternoon you drive south to the Ishasha sector of the park, where ancient wild fig trees in the riverine forest are famously colonised by lions — often a whole pride draped across the branches — a behaviour unique to this corner of East Africa.

   🏨 Ishasha Wilderness Camp or Enjojo Lodge 🍽 B, L, D
9. 9

   Ishasha to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest

   From Ishasha you travel southwest through communities bordering the Maramagambo Forest, gaining altitude as you enter the Albertine Rift highlands. The road to Bwindi rises through banana groves and small-hold farms to the park boundary, where the forest closes in — dense, ancient and layered with fern, moss and orchid. You arrive at your lodge by early afternoon with time to rest, walk the forest edge trails, and prepare mentally and physically for tomorrow's gorilla trek.

   🏨 Buhoma Community Rest Camp or Mahogany Springs Lodge 🍽 B, L, D
10. 10

    Bwindi Impenetrable Forest — Mountain Gorilla Trekking

    This is the day that defines the journey. After a 7 am briefing at the Uganda Wildlife Authority ranger post, you enter Bwindi Impenetrable National Park with an armed ranger, a guide and a small group of no more than eight trekkers. The trek through steep, vine-tangled forest can take between one and five hours to locate the habituated gorilla family — but the moment you encounter them, time stops. A silverback male, weighing up to 220 kg, regards you with measured calm; juveniles play and tumble at his feet; mothers nurse infants in the undergrowth. Your permitted hour in their presence is unhurried, deeply moving, and utterly unlike any other wildlife experience on Earth. Return to the lodge for a celebratory lunch and an afternoon at leisure.

    🏨 Buhoma Community Rest Camp or Mahogany Springs Lodge 🍽 B, L, D
11. 11

    Bwindi to Entebbe — Departure

    After a final breakfast surrounded by forest birdsong, you transfer northward to Entebbe International Airport for your international departure flight. The drive takes approximately five to six hours, passing through the rolling hills of south-western Uganda and skirting the northern shore of Lake Victoria — Africa's largest lake — as you approach the airport. Your AECONS guide accompanies you to the terminal, closing an eleven-day journey that has spanned two countries, five ecosystems, and some of the most extraordinary wildlife encounters on the planet.

    🍽 B