Chimpanzee Tracking

Uganda's Kibale National Park is the region's premier chimp-tracking destination: 795 km² of forest holding the highest primate density in Africa, with a habituated community of roughly 1,500 individuals in total across the park and a single tracking group typically numbering 20–100. Success rates here consistently exceed 90%, among the highest of any chimp-tracking site on the continent.

Rwanda's Nyungwe Forest offers a wilder, quieter alternative: a smaller habituated community of around 400 chimpanzees in steeper, more remote terrain, with genuinely low visitor numbers compared to Kibale. Sightings are somewhat less consistent as a result, but the trade-off is a rawer forest experience with far fewer other trackers on the trail.

Both destinations offer a chimpanzee habituation experience — a longer permit (up to four hours in Kibale) that follows researchers actively working to habituate a wild community, rather than visiting one already fully accustomed to tourists. It's a genuinely different, more research-oriented morning, and popular with travellers who've already done a standard one-hour trek elsewhere.

We pair chimp tracking most often with gorilla trekking on a single Uganda itinerary — Kibale sits a comfortable drive from Queen Elizabeth National Park, which connects on to Bwindi — giving guests both of Africa's iconic great-ape encounters within a single week.