My Ugandan Odyssey: The Magic of Meeting Primates at the Center of the Earth

Uganda is a place where kids always wave at passing vehicles, they cheer at you as if you are on some kind of a rally. Their happiness is super infectious. They also blow kisses at you if you bribe them with candy but they are not asking for it. Being a victim of ambushes in other countries, I appreciated that completely.

There are also many of them everywhere. When I looked up Uganda demographics, it said nearly fifty percent of its 40+ million people are under 15 and it was believable. Uganda has one good thing going. Its fertile land which is a major contributor to the economy, its kids and general population are well fed even though they are lacking in other resources especially luxuries.

You often see them toiling in the hot sun most or all of the work being manual. Well, it is also not easy to use draft animals with terrace farming, but sometimes they are just hills with no terraces. I was wondering how irrigation would work but they depend mostly on rains I guess.You see a family or two farming an entire hill which was very surprising to me considering how hard it is to grow crops on steep surfaces.

Maize, matoke (a special kind of plantain), beans, cassava, sweet potatoes, and groundnuts are what they grow mostly and constitute their staple diet. Coffee, tea, and tobacco are the main cash crops they grow and export. Not being a coffee person, I didn’t get to taste it but got some home along with alcohol for friends and family left behind. The Uganda black tea which I got to taste was actually quite milky and wasn’t that spicy as they bragged, well they are dealing with an Indian. 

Uganda is in East Africa and is landlocked sharing borders with Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Sudan, Kenya, and Tanzania. With conflicts in South Sudan and DRC, Uganda is faced with a refugee crisis with over a million refugees that it has taken. Being a poor nation itself, having to provide for refugees has been a problem. 

After our long flights from D.C., my friend (who is interested more in how I travel rather than Uganda) and I set off on our first leg of our road trip after getting a few winks in Entebbe. As we passed through the bustling capital city Kampala, I started to realize how densely populated Uganda is. 

With no sightseeing stops in between other than a crater lake, we reached Kibale National Park with a warm welcome from baboons on the highway. After checking into our hotel, we explored the Bigodi swamp with a guide and an armed rifleman. As days passed by, we realized how we were being escorted always by armed guards to fire warning shots into the air to deter wildlife, ensuring our safety without incident. It made me feel safe knowing there’s help always and how they do it discreetly without interrupting your activities.

We got to see five out of the eight primates including the L’Hoest monkeys, baboons, some colobuses and several birds. Despite our guide’s efforts to get me to focus on the wildlife and bird calls, the persistent buzzing of a fly in my ear was all I could hear, I swear the damn thing was stalking me throughout. Best thing about the swamp walk was knowing that it is a community driven endeavor with all proceeds going towards the uplist of the indigenous people of the region.

We learned that most of the land in Uganda is owned by people and not the Government. Except in bigger cities, there is no concept of rent or mortgage as Ugandans own their homes mostly. I really loved that part as someone spending a great portion of her paycheck on home mortgage, ahem, my American dream. With most people also being self-sufficient with respect to food, we were told education is what they spend on mostly. 

I wanted to rest well that night as we had chimpanzee trekking planned the next morning but was disturbed by the presence of some kind of a rodent, I am guessing, living rent-free in my room. After more than a few tense moments (more like hours), the rodent and I both decided to co-exist and not disturb the peace and tranquility of the lizards and several bugs in the room. The only thing I was hoping for at this point was for it to not crawl into my open bag only to emerge during the customs and immigration process. People who know me well know how much I avoid getting into trouble with the current administration and being accused of smuggling wildlife and getting deported to El Salvador is not something I am looking forward to.

Pranking Primates

After several expeditions to Africa, I am starting to see a few patterns here. Wait patiently for the monkey people to finish their breakfast up in the trees and they will eventually descend to get some water and/or to socialize. After a chase which we made to look like a nonchalant non-chase as park authorities forbid chases, our curiosity in chimp behavior was satisfied after we came in close proximity with a middle aged primate. He seemed very wise for his age (exactly our age I told my friend, except in ape years) and we recorded his every movement from yawning to staring at nothing with great delight. Just like humans, we repeated to each other over and over.

With very few tourist traps, Uganda is not too commercialized so much that I could not even buy a few local favorites like banana gin that I wanted to. You are not being annoyed by vendors to buy their fares (I remember not getting down to use the bathroom in Madagascar), not too many distractions on the highways or roadside aimed at tourists. The only thing was that food at the resorts we stayed at was expensive and too much in quantity. A three course meal everyday was exhausting and unnecessary and it’s a miracle I did not put on weight. 

That afternoon, the choices were to learn to cook local cuisine or to go on a crater tour, and I was “forced to choose” the crater walk even though my legs were tired from chasing chimps, as cooking is not for men according to my guide and travel partner. I loved the choice however as I got to see six crater lakes, three at a time from different viewpoints. However, I could not escape chauvinism as stories that my guide shared about these lakes all had women witches or villains. On the way back, to my dismay, we met a group of kids who just killed a snake, some kind of a forest cobra I learned later.

Uganda is multilingual and to understand each other people often resort to English. English is the official language and medium of instruction in schools anyway as Uganda was under British rule till the 1960’s. Luganda, Swahili and Lusoga are the most spoken languages, especially in the cities with mixed tribes with dozens more spoken by other smaller tribes.

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park

The drive from Kibale to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park was breathtaking with stunning landscapes and I annoyed my travel buddy with too many stops to take pictures. It felt like heaven on earth I said, realizing why Uganda is referred to as the Pearl of Africa. To balance, the hellish experience is the condition of the roads. I bumped my head against the glass windows a little too many times (my friend secretly and sometimes openly laughed at my clumsiness) and at this point, I was praying for one large pothole instead of strips of paved road for consistency’s sake. We stopped by to take pictures at the equator line. 

When we reached Bwindi, we had an optional tour to visit the Batwa tribe, we were told. I was pleasantly surprised to learn the Batwa or simply the Twa are pygmies. I was taller by over a foot than most men and women when we were dancing. They took us into the forest and showed us their ways of living — the medicinal herbs they collected from the forest and used for different ailments, the huts and tree houses they built, firemaking from scratch, their archery skills, and needless to say, I participated in them all, knowing our donations would help rehabilitate them provided some comfort. After being forced out of the forest by the government, they now live on the edges of these forests and make a living by working in neighboring villages.

While my friend found our stay in Uganda lacking in luxury, I saw it as adventurous and authentic, perfectly suited to the local landscape. We both appreciated the staff’s courtesy but the dilly dallying bothered the American in me a little bit, time is money, after all. They made every attempt to serve us with good food and clean water in contrast to some other countries in Africa and I was very thankful that we did not fall sick even though we were eating fruits and raw salads. 

The views of Lake Mulehe and Mount Muhabura from our lodge that night were pleasant. Unpleasantness that day came in the form of many steps to get to our rooms and back up to the main lobby for dinner. The night was otherwise uneventful with the weather only slightly chilly and not many mosquitoes to complain about.

Uganda is often referred to as the land of the primates and I was especially excited for our next encounter, the gorillas, which was a key motivator for my trip to Uganda. With Bwindi housing more than half of the global population, we were excited to embark on this adventurous trek to see the great apes. With protective jackets laced with bug spray and our pants tucked into our socks and boots to prevent ants or other bugs from crawling up, we were well prepared I thought.

Even though I was prepared for the impenetrability of the forest, I was still surprised by how lush and thick the vegetation was, making it challenging and unforgiving to traverse. We had to use our hands to brush off leaves and branches to move forward, sometimes getting help from our rangers with machetes when it was getting impossible to penetrate. The unpredictability of landing with each step made it quite adventurous and I was wondering what would happen if we were to accidentally fall on a sharp tree stump and there were a good number of them. I only fell once and was totally proud of that achievement.

Silverback Gorilla

Now onto our favorite part, the gorillas. We were one of the lucky ones to spot our family of over 10 gorillas soon enough. The family had a heavy male dominant silverback, and several other females, kids and babies. One tiny little fellow got my attention with its super cute antics — rough tumbling, play-fighting, and swinging from the branches all carefully recorded by me. Awakened by a strong maternal instinct, I did nothing much except stalk the baby for the entire duration. With that experience checked off my bucket list, I am content and ready to go home.

I am not sure what prompted the discussion, but I was struck by our guide’s homophobic remarks, something I came across in other African countries. He claimed that non-binary individuals don’t exist in Uganda, despite my attempts to educate him on the fact that gender identity is not a choice. We agreed to disagree and moved on quickly. The slow and leisurely canoe ride on Lake Mulehe that evening was a lovely way to unwind.

The drive to Lake Mburo National Park took a few hours with a road accident that found a motorcyclist dead, but the lunch stop was a treat, with a local meal featuring matoke, maize bread, cassava, and millet bread. Checking into our hotel rooms with views of the national park was a highlight, and I was absolutely delighted and refused to come in from the balcony. On a late afternoon game drive into the park we got to see some waterbucks, zebras, giraffes, impalas, several bird species, and numerous silly looking pumbas, alright warthogs. The sight of trees sprouting from termite mounds caught my attention – it was an intriguing sight.

As there were no predators in the park, the occasional leopard not causing much damage, the animals looked stress free and only died of natural causes. What a waste of tasty meat I thought, but that gave me courage to sign up for a ranger-led walk in the park. It was a whole new level of immersion – getting up close and personal with wildlife and their, ahem, ‘natural byproducts’. I appreciated the strategic placement of black and blue traps in the park, designed to catch tsetse flies that can cause sleeping sickness. Of course, the one time we forgot our rain jackets, the skies decided to open up and we got wet.

The afternoon boat cruise on Lake Mburo was a highlight, yielding some great experiences. As the sun beat down, herds of hippos rushed to cool off in the water, their urgency driven by the need to regulate their body temperature as they do not have sweat glands. Each family has its own entrance marked with urine and trespassing by other groups can lead to intense conflicts. Other highlights were crocodiles, monkeys, eagles, and numerous other birds and a somber sighting of a floating dead hippo noted by a fellow tourist.

The morning drive back to Entebbe was marked by a lighthearted argument over whether we were navigating through fog, mist, or clouds – a distraction from the bittersweet reality that our trip was wrapping up. On a whim, I added a quick stop at Lake Victoria for pictures, despite my friend’s protests – it seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Africa’s largest lake. We ended our Uganda adventure on a high note with a delicious meal at an Entebbe Indian restaurant, whose rooftop dining area exceeded our expectations.

Uganda’s lush green landscapes and cleanliness made a great impression on us, and the warm hospitality – complete with delicious food and safe drinking water – made us feel like royalty. While the game drives didn’t quite live up to my expectations, given my previous experience at Serengeti, the gorilla and chimp treks were truly unforgettable and made up for it. Uganda has tremendous potential as a tourist destination, but it seems like its attractions aren’t being showcased effectively to the world. Overall, my experience was incredible, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone looking for an unforgettable adventure.

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Padma Nadella is an IT professional who lives in Eagan, Minnesota, with her husband and 17-year-old son. She manages a Facebook group for Minnesotans to collaborate on events and activities related to health and fitness. The group now has over two thousand members. Jack of all trades, she enjoys playing volleyball, traveling the world, and entertaining, mostly, but dabbles in everything else.