Uganda Gorilla Trekking and Beyond: A Conversation with Our Local Guides
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Time to read 2 min
The Esploro Travel Podcast is where the people behind our expeditions get to talk: the local guides, the wildlife experts, the team leaders who spend their lives in places most people only dream of visiting. No scripts, no marketing. Just conversations.
Everyone who books the Uganda Primate Special does so because of the gorilla trekking. That is understandable: an hour face to face with a mountain gorilla family in the impenetrable forest is one of those experiences that genuinely defies description. But in this episode of the Esploro Travel podcast, Hussein and Ahmed, two brothers who have spent their careers guiding in Uganda, make a convincing case that gorilla trekking is almost the least surprising part of the trip.
We start by talking about what Uganda actually is: not the brochure version, but the country as Hussein and Ahmed know it. Two brothers who grew up there, who have spent decades walking its forests and savannas, and who have a very different answer to the question "what should I see in Uganda?" than any gorilla trekking guidebook would give you.
The Shoebill
We talk about the shoebill. If you don't know what a shoebill is, stop what you're doing and look it up. Then come back and listen to Hussein describe tracking one in the Mabamba swamp at dawn. It is one of the strangest and most extraordinary birds on the planet, and most people who travel to Uganda for gorilla trekking have no idea it exists.
The White Rhino Trek
© Gabriele Seghizzi
We talk about white rhino tracking on foot at Ziwa Sanctuary, one of the few places where you can walk directly toward one of these animals with no vehicle between you and them. Hussein explains why they're called white rhinos despite being anything but white, and what it actually feels like to stand a few metres from an animal that was completely extinct in Uganda not long ago.
Lions, Hippos and Open Savanna
© Gabriele Seghizzi
We talk about tree-climbing lions in Ishasha, one of the only places on earth where lions have developed the habit of hauling themselves into fig trees to rest during the hottest hours of the day. About boat safaris on the Kazinga Channel, where hippos, crocodiles and elephants crowd the banks in numbers that would be hard to believe if you hadn't seen them. And about the kind of wildlife density that makes Uganda one of the most extraordinary safari destinations in Africa, a fact that consistently catches visitors off guard, and one that often gets completely lost in the gorilla trekking conversation.
The Secret No Guidebook Tells You About Gorilla Trekking
And then we get to the gorilla trekking itself. Ahmed shares something that every guide knows but somehow never makes it into any travel article or brochure: gorillas fart. Constantly. Loudly. It is apparently one of the first things you notice when you are close enough during gorilla trekking, and one of the things people remember longest.
This is Uganda: the gorilla trekking, the rhinos, the shoebill, the lions. Told by two brothers who know it from the inside.