What we do
Wildlife, culture, and time in the country. On your terms.
Wildlife, culture, and time in the country. On your terms.
We run customized trips through Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania, built around mountain gorilla trekking, chimpanzee tracking, savanna safari, birding, and cultural visits. Trips run with one party at a time, and the itinerary is yours.
You'll trek for mountain gorillas in either Volcanoes National Park (Rwanda) or Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (Uganda), depending on the trip. Each group goes out with an armed park ranger and a tracker team that radios in the family's location each morning. You spend one hour with the gorillas once you reach them.
In Uganda, you can also track habituated chimpanzee groups in Kibale National Park. You'll usually hear them long before you see them.
Beyond primates: elephants, lions, hippos, zebras, and giraffes. The wildlife parks are Akagera in Rwanda, Queen Elizabeth in Uganda, and (with a Tanzania extension) the parks of the north, including the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater.
East Africa has hundreds of bird species. The shoebill stork is reachable on certain Uganda itineraries. So is the African wood owl. So are the bee-eaters and Bwindi's forest specialists. Dan can build a birding-focused trip if that's what you want.
If you'd like, your trip can include a stop at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda. It is sobering and heartbreaking, and it's also one of the most important ways to understand the country.
You can also build in school and village visits, time at an artisan cooperative, and (if you ask) a stop with a Batwa community. The Batwa are indigenous forest people who were displaced when Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park were established.
Artisan cooperatives are community-run groups where craftspeople pool work, profit, and resources, and where most of the handmade goods travelers bring home actually originate.
Trips run with one party at a time. You won't be with strangers, except inside the gorilla and chimp groups (where the parks themselves cap groups at 8). You set the length, the budget, and the focus. High-end lodging or value-conscious: we work with both. Trips can be Rwanda only, Uganda only, both combined, or extended into Tanzania.
You decide what you want to do and see. If you want an all-wildlife trip, we'll build it around the parks. If you want to mix in cultural experiences, Sam will take you to the Kigali Genocide Memorial, to local schools and villages, to artisan cooperatives. It's your trip.
Email us, and we'll start building yours.
Email Dan, our US-based coordinator, and we'll start designing your trip.