Index

Click here for the details of the itinerary, accomodation & Species systematic list

Click here for the Uganda Photo gallery

Getting there

Flight from Norwich (very convenient for us!) to Amsterdam, then on to Entebbe, Uganda. Cost of flight was Ł900, you could probably get this cheaper if you are prepared to go in Spetember or fly from one of the bigger airports.

Bird Guides & Companies

We booked our entire trip through a Ugandan based company, Access Uganda. They were recommended to us by other birders, and we corresponded via email and wire transferred the money through our bank. The company is very well established, and Hassan Mutebi the owner is a very well known birder in Uganda, he was also at the Birdwatching Fair in 2006.
Many of the birding sites and parks are not accessible without a guide, (i.e you would not be let into the areas without a guide).
At the specialist sites, Access Uganda used some specialist local guides for certain species.

Maps

You do not need a map, but we bought one as we were interested in seeing exactly where we were, and where we were heading.
Nelles Map of Uganda 1:700,000 readily available at any big book store. Approximately Ł6 in 2006.

Temperature

The weather was never that hot, maximum probably 25c, in fact towards the end of the trip we had several overcast days, with heavy showers overnight. It could get rather humid late afternoons but nothing unbearable.

Useful websites

www.accessugandatours.com

Email address

accessug@utonline.co.ug

Money & currency

We took english sterling and this was easy enough to get changed in the bigger towns and places, however dollars are the most easy to exchange. If you are going on an inclusive trip you will probably need no more than Ł250, and getting travellers cheques would be a real hassle, I think dollars is the easiest way.

Overview of the trip

Overall we had a fantastic trip recording over 400 species of birds, 26+ species of mammals including Mountain Gorilla, Chimpanzee, Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Zebra and host of others. The travel was a bit much at times, as the roads away from the capital are often not much more than mud tracks! If you are going for 14 days or so and are not worried about missing a few bird species, then i would recommend dropping Semlike - this site is out the way and in order to do it justice requires several days.

Our route is roughly outlined below - we covered over 1600 miles on some very rough, muddy & bumpy tracks!!