Protecting 296 square miles of lush mid-altitude rainforest and swamp, Kibale National Park is Uganda’s top site for tracking habituated chimpanzees. The forest is also renowned for its diversity of other primates, with olive baboon, red colobus, black-and-white colobus, red-tailed monkey and the endemic Uganda mangabey being the most conspicuous of a dozen recorded species. Birdlife is exceptional, with 370 species listed, and the surrounding countryside is studded with beautiful crater lakes set in deep volcanic calderas.

Discover Kibale National Park

Twice-daily chimpanzee-tracking excursions visit the Kanyantale community, which comprises 90 individuals and was first habituated in the early 1990s. Tracking comes with a near certainty of encountering man’s closest relative, but the experience tends to be more variable than is the case with mountain gorillas. When the chimps are on the move, sightings can be frustratingly fleeting, but even on a bad day you’ll usually come face-to-face with one or two individuals sitting calmly on the forest floor.

Guided night walks provide a rare opportunity to look for nocturnal forest dwellers such as the potto, a slow-moving arboreal furball that somewhat resembles a sloth but is more closely related to lemurs and bushbabies.

One of Uganda’s most reliably rewarding birding excursions, the guided Bigodi Swamp Walk runs through a community-protected wetland sanctuary bordering the national park. Regular avian highlights include the dazzling great blue turaco, African grey parrot and yellow-billed barbet. And even if birds aren’t your thing, the savvy guides at Bigodi often locate three or four different monkey species on a walk.

Also protected in a community reserve, Lake Nkuruba is a gorgeous small crater lake whose sheer forested walls support red colobus, black-and-white colobus and red-tailed monkey along with more than 100 bird species.