A Batwa community on the edge of Bwindi, where the forest people evicted when the park was gazetted in 1991 show how they lived inside it — tracking, hunting, fire, medicine, and the tree houses they slept in. It is a short visit and the most direct account you will get of what conservation cost the people who were already there.
Every one of these is something we run here, not a stock list.
We do not have a scheduled itinerary for Batwa Cultural Village on the site right now, which does not mean we cannot take you. We build private trips to order across Uganda — tell us your dates and we will put a route and a price together.
Plan a trip to Batwa Cultural VillageThe Batwa Cultural village is where the Batwa (Pigmies) still live in the same way they used to years ago in tree houses. The Batwa only began leaving their forest homes around 15 years ago and they have been able to remain on this land thanks to the support of a generous American benefactor who donated the land back to them and created a cultural program. The fees from visiting tourists and are given to the Batwa project and they delight in welcoming visitors to their village and demonstrating how they make weapons, dance, make fires using sticks and cook.
Most safaris here combine two or three of these.
Bwindi holds roughly half the mountain gorillas left on earth. You walk into thick, steep, ancient forest with a ranger and a tracker, sometimes for an hour and sometimes for six, and then spend one hour with a habituated family at a few metres' distance. People who have done every safari there is still describe it as the best hour of their lives.
The Nile squeezes through a gap seven metres wide and drops forty-three metres, and the noise of it is the reason people come. Around the falls is Uganda's largest park: a boat trip to the base of them past hippo and crocodile, then game drives on the northern bank for lion, elephant and Rothschild's giraffe.
The best chimpanzee tracking in East Africa, in a forest holding thirteen primate species. Around 1,500 chimps live here and the habituated communities are relaxed enough that you watch them feed, groom and argue overhead rather than catching a glimpse and losing them.
Uganda's most visited park, and the one with the most variety: a boat cruise on the Kazinga Channel past hundreds of hippo, the Kasenyi plains for lion, and the Ishasha sector in the south where the lions lie in the fig trees. The Rwenzori mountains stand behind it on a clear day.
Tell us roughly when you can travel and how long you have. We will tell you honestly whether Batwa Cultural Village is the right call for those dates — and what it costs.
