Planning road trip in Uganda book your 4×4 car with 4×4 Car Hire Uganda that spend their entire days exploring Uganda’s best sights, so choosing their favorite sightings of the year means they must be pretty special. Despite the country’s wildlife, it cannot be compared to Tanzania and Kenya, but Uganda doesn’t lack in tourist attractions. Not only can you come within meters of a gorilla family, there are so many opportunities for boat trips on the Nile, Volcano hikes and seeing the five on the Savannah plains and track our closest cousins, the chimpanzees’ in the dense rain forest.

So as you wondering what to do in Uganda? There countless attractions of interest in Uganda’s National Parks and Reserves. There are many off the beaten track places to visit in Uganda and to get started here are some of the best things to do in Uganda below.

Boat Cruising in Murchison Falls National Park

With 4×4 Car Hire Uganda, take a road trip with rooftop tent car to Murchison Falls National Park and take a boat trip on the on the Victoria Nile where you will be able to see and spot plenty of school of hippos and crocodiles plus the possibility of elephants, buffaloes and giraffes that come to drink some water.

The Falls are the main highlight, though imagine the explosive force of the wide Nile being pushed through a small narrow cleft in the Rift Valley escarpment. These falls are completely amazing. I would rate them the strongest falls in the world. They give an amazing perspective of how nature can be wild and amazing. With this, just sit back and enjoy the sunset with a drink in hand while cruising on the Nile.

Gorilla Safaris in Bwindi Impenetrable and Mgahinga Gorilla National Parks

Self-drive yourself to southern western Uganda for mountain gorilla adventure. In Uganda, there are national parks where you can track mountain gorillas, Bwindi Impenetrable and Mgahinga National Parks. Gorilla Trekking is rated as one of the world’s wildlife encounters. The trek can be challenging, depending on the current location of your assigned gorilla family. The Ugandan Wildlife Authority does an impressive job of making it a safe, well-controlled and managed experience.

A gorilla trek is a real once in a lifetime experience for most and Bwindi, together with Mgahinga are the great place to do it. Once you arrive you are allocated to trek to one of the gorilla families in the sector. Each one varies in difficulty, depending on where the trackers believe each family is likely to be as they move each day. Each trek has up to 8 participants with a guide and a couple of rangers.

I can’t recommend hiring a porter, for a min payment of $15, highly enough. As well as carrying your backpack they will help you on the hike and there are steep up and downs and stream crossings in virgin forest that the guide needs to hack through with his machete to make passable. It was quite challenging and I really appreciated my porter’s assistance.

The actual gorilla experience is amazing and the hour goes too quickly. You do get to be amazingly close to these wonderful creatures. They are often quite curious and will pass right beside you and perhaps pull on your clothing.

The long hike through the dense rain forest on slippery slopes, the relatively high price is all worth it after locating the gorillas. The one hour you get to spend with them is spine tingling experience you never forget.

Looking For Shoe bill

You cannot mistake a shoe bill for any bird, they grow 4 to 5 feet tall, have bluish-gray plumage, and an 8-plus-foot wingspan. The shoe bill is one of the five most desirable birds in Africa by birdwatchers. The best place to view the shoe bill is in the vast wetlands of the Nile in Uganda, especially around the Mabamba Bay marshes on Lake Victoria shores in Entebbe.

The shoe bill is distributed in freshwater swamps of central tropical Africa, from southern Sudan through parts of eastern Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, western Tanzania, and northern Zambia.

Chimpanzee Safaris in Kibale National Parks

Chimpanzees can be found in quite a number of parks and reserves in eastern Africa the four big ‘chimp parks’ are Tanzania’s Gombe Stream and Mahale Mountains, Rwanda’s Nyungwe Forest and Uganda’s Kibale Forest. But, the World’s Best Chimpanzee Encounter is found in Kibale National Park.

Uganda’s Kibale Forest by contrast offers an enticing mixture of easy access (about a half-day drive from Kampala), excellent value accommodation in all price ranges, a wide array of other activities from seriously good birding in a neighboring area of marshland to long forest walks and numerous exciting community activities. All this stands it in good stead but then there’s the chimpanzee encounter itself.

The chimps here are almost as relaxed with people as those of Gombe and Mahale so very close up encounters are almost a given. As with all the other parks the standard chimp tracking tour gives you just one hour with the chimps (and it costs more here than any other park), but what I think gives Kibale the edge of all the others is that it’s also possible to pay for a one/two or three day ‘chimp experience’ The one day experience doesn’t cost much more than the one hour tracking permit (and each successive day becomes cheaper still) but you get to spend from the crack of dawn to early evening (or whenever you’ve had enough) with the chimps.

Tracking the Rhino in Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary

Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary is a place to not miss when traveling in Uganda. Ziwa is a special place as conservationists are ensuring the Rhino specie is growing year by year, and the aim is to have another sanctuary in the near future. The Sanctuary is a wonderful reserve located near Masindi and not too much far from Kampala and it hosts a wonderful and vast environment that allow a symbiosis between human and natural environments and at the same time preserving the place from “invasive” human settlements. The compound is very modest, with only the necessary (offices, accommodations for visitors and workers, a very small shop, a restaurant) and a camping site near.

By visiting this rhino re-introduction project you’re able to top off the big five with the white rhino. The sanctuary is set up near Murchison Falls National Park and it’s the only place in Uganda where you’re able to see rhinos in a heavily protected but wild area. The rhinos are free to move around on 7000 hectares of land. Don’t forget to wear long trousers and closed/waterproof shoes, because you will walk through high grass and wet areas to search for the rhinos, accompanied by a ranger of course.

The rhino trekking will take you around 1,5-2,5 hours and will cost you about $50 per person. Its quiet short and expensive, but they are doing a great job to protect our rhinos. Don’t go in the middle of the day when it’s very hot. The rhinos are resting in the shade and not really active.

If you want to have more time at Ziwa to do other activities like a Shoe bill trek, canoe ride or night- and nature walks, you have the possibility to overnight in a lodge or tent. If I would do another Uganda trip I would stay here one night because here you’ll have the highest chance of seeing the prehistoric Shoe bill, an opportunity I missed. Nevertheless it’s good to include Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary in your Uganda trip to make you aware how bad the rhino situation in the world is.