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Is this the world's greatest destination for wildlife?

Mike Unwin meets Totty the chimp, 35 species of mammal and 250 types of bird on a whistle-stop tour of this biodiversity hotspot

It is late morning in the forest: downtime for the Kanyantale troop. Sprawled in the undergrowth, they form small companionable groups, dozing, grooming and catching up on gossip. The humid air hums with insects. All seems right with the world.

Not for Totty, though. A short distance away, he picks despondently at his knuckles. They’re talking about him. He just knows it. They’re always talking about him.

As alpha male, he knows these mutterings come with the territory, but still it gets to him. The fur on his shoulders bristles as his resentment builds. Time to shake things up.

“Look out!” shouts Bosco, our guide. “Here he comes.” We duck off the path as 50kg of chimpanzee barrels past, hooting maniacally. The forest explodes in outrage as screaming apes scramble for the trees.

Kibale National Park - Credit: Getty
Kibale Forest National park, one of the best places in Africa to observe our closest living relatives Credit: Getty

In seconds the clearing is empty – save for Totty, who stands alone, savouring the effects of his thuggery. He hurls a dead branch into the bushes – a final flourish – then swaggers off down the trail. Job done. That’ll keep ‘em on their toes.

“Totty has always been the strongest,” explains Bosco, as the pandemonium subsides and the troop descend, warily, from their tree-top bolt-holes. He explains how Totty’s unchecked aggression once held him back socially; how only when he’d learned to make friends was he able to build the strategic alliances needed to unseat the previous alpha male, Rukara.

Bosco turns to point out this unfortunate individual, who – grey-haired and care-worn – now hangs out with the other old-timers, doubtless grumbling about how things have gone downhill since his day.

Kibale Forest National Park, in south-west Uganda, is home to over 1,450 chimps, including several habituated troops. It’s one of the best places in Africa to observe our closest living relatives – and, indeed, the action has been so compelling that I’ve lost all sense of time. It seems days ago that we stood in the pre-dawn murk listening for the telltale hooting.

Since then, we’ve stuck with the troop – at times running to keep up as they filed along the trail or swung through the canopy; at others, just sitting quietly on the damp leaf litter to watch their endlessly enthralling interactions.

chimpanzees - Credit: Getty
Mike got to know some characters among the chimpanzees of Uganda Credit: Getty

Bosco knows every individual intimately. He introduces them – there’s Sebo, cradling her new baby; Tintina, ill-tempered and limping; Bwana, so shy he hides at any hint of trouble – and tells their stories as the action unfolds.

The apes seem oblivious to us but there are rules of engagement: we mustn’t mimic their facial expressions, for instance, or eat in their presence.

“Habituation never stops; it’s a continuous process,” Bosco explains, describing the years of ongoing work that has allowed these chimps to accept human observers. “The moment you step back from following them, they retreat into wildness.”

This is a salutary reminder. It’s easy to forget that these are wild animals – especially given the uncannily human nature of so much of their behaviour. Sitting among these apes, at the very heart of the continent on which we ourselves evolved, I would defy even the most die-hard creationist to deny some sense of kinship.

Uganda is primate central. Not only does it boast Africa’s two great ape A-listers, chimps and gorillas, but it is also home to more than a dozen other species from a little further down the evolutionary ladder.

L’Hoest’s monkey - Credit: Getty
A beedy-eyed L’Hoest’s monkey Credit: Getty

At Kibale, I had no sooner checked into the aptly named Primate Lodge than I was watching a gang of grey mangabeys and red-tailed monkeys cavorting above my chalet. Behind reception, black-and-white colobus monkeys dangled their splendid bell-pull tails from high in a giant Newtonia tree, while L’Hoest’s monkeys peered at me from the under-storey, all beady eyes and dapper goatees.

The primate action didn’t stop when the sun went down. Back in the forest for an after-dinner night walk, I was soon following Bosco’s torch beam to a tiny, squirrel-like animal staring back at me, its saucer-eyes wide in alarm.

This was a Prince Demidoff’s galago – a member of the bushbaby family and, at 60g, Africa’s smallest primate. Perhaps fearing that we were over-dressed chimps (the apes hunt these elfin creatures with sticks), it disappeared with one bound into the darkness.

The secret to Uganda’s primate riches is its forests – an eastward extension of the huge equatorial forests of the Congo basin. Yet, the country is not only forest. Nestled into its modest borders is an impressive spread of other habitats, including lakes, semi-deserts and swathes of tropical savannah. In other words, Uganda does big game.

Mindful of this, my tour had started at Murchison Falls National Park in the country’s far west. Here, venturing out from Baker’s Lodge on the banks of the Victoria Nile, my guide Robert Aliganyira and I sought out the nibbling herds that have been steadily repopulating Uganda’s largest park ever since the dark days of Amin. We weren’t disappointed.

Rothschild’s giraffes - Credit: Getty
Rothschild’s giraffes are among the many animals to be seen in Murchison Falls National Park Credit: Getty

Traversing the plains, we found Rothschild’s giraffes pruning the acacias, elephants tearing up bales of grass and hartebeest perching territorially on termite mounds. A boat trip past snorting hippo and drinking buffalo led us upriver to the famous cataract, where the Nile thunders through a 20ft-wide gorge on its way westward to Lake Albert. Our requisite snaps were fogged with spray.

Predators had eluded us at Murchison Falls but a few days later, and some 300km to the south, I found myself watching four lions – from below. We were now in Queen Elizabeth National Park (British royalty remains omnipresent in Uganda), and the big cats were draped across the sturdy limbs of a sycamore fig tree – an unusual and photogenic habit that has made them, and the park, famous.

Known locally as simply “Queen”, this jewel of a reserve is bisected by the Kazinga Channel, which links lakes (you guessed it) Edward and George. The following morning, a boat ride here brought us not only point-blank views of hippos and crocs but also birds in bewildering profusion: malachite kingfishers clinging to reeds, fish eagles yodelling overhead and spoonbills working the shallows like metal detectors.

This feathered pageantry was no surprise. Uganda’s birdlife competes with its primates as the country’s crowning wildlife glory, its list of some 1,030 species being proportionally the highest of any country in Africa. Queen alone has recorded more than 600 species – not bad for a land-locked park smaller than Norfolk.

So far, each stop had produced a different birding experience.

Fish eagles - Credit: Getty
Fish eagles are one of many birds to tick off your list in Queen Elizabeth National Park Credit: Getty

Kibale’s forests had been about sound – a multi-layered avian conversation that filtered down from the canopy. Bosco had helped pick out the trickier voices: “scaly-breasted illadopsis,” he whispered, at a rising whistle from the under-storey; “black-billed turaco,” at a harsher growling from higher up.

On Queen’s savannahs, by contrast, it was more in-your-face visuals. Rollers, bee-eaters and bishops flaunted outrageous colours, while crowned cranes – Uganda’s national bird – leaped and bowed in flamboyant courtship displays. Even the dozing lions had an eagle owl sharing their tree.

We saved the best until last. At Mabamba Bay Community Reserve – on the shore of Lake Victoria, a short way from Entebbe – we poled a dugout down reed-choked channels in search of Africa’s birding holy grail.

“Shoebill,” announced our guide Irene. And there it was, standing among the papyrus: battleship-grey, as tall as a ten-year-old, and equipped with a bill the size and shape of a Dutch clog. Surely the weirdest bird on the planet, no wonder it had so astonished Victorian naturalist John Gould when the first specimen turned up at the Natural History Museum.

By the time I reached the airport, after 12 days in Uganda, my wildlife tally was impressive: 250-plus birds, some 35 mammals and a wealth of reptiles, butterflies and others. The country’s fabled biodiversity had lived up to its reputation.

But what about the most famous of all Uganda’s beasts: the showstopper on the primate parade? Thankfully, that had not disappointed either. Two days after leaving Queen, I had found myself halfway up the forested slopes of a volcano in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, breathless with excitement and exertion, as a hairy black arm reach out to pluck a handful of foliage from virtually under my nose.

The arm belonged to Kanyoni, a 25-year-old mountain gorilla and leader of the Mubare family – which, back in 1996, became Uganda’s first habituated troop.

Today Bwindi is home to some 430 mountain gorillas, around half the world’s population. But I wasn’t reflecting on this sobering statistic as, seconds later, the arm’s formidable owner – at 180kg, some 3,000 times heavier than a Demidoff’s galago – emerged in all his muscled bulk to glare at us from under deep, disapproving brows.

The rest of the troop slowly materialised in the greenery and for the next heart-stopping hour we sat quietly while they did their thing, munching, grooming and dozing. Bar the odd grunt and soft breaking of wind, there was little noise – and certainly none of the chimps’ histrionics. Again, the experience felt like something more profound than mere wildlife watching. The quiet authority of the silverback, the maternal anxieties of the females and the boisterous boundary-pushing of the adolescents all appeared uncannily human.

And the questions in those deep-set eyes almost had me apologising for my voyeuristic photo-snapping.

queen elizabeth national park at dusk - Credit: Getty
Queen Elizabeth National Park at dusk Credit: Getty

Since returning home, I’ve wondered a lot about what will become of the chimps and gorillas I met in Uganda. Perhaps they are wondering the same thing about me. Apes get you that way. I can only hope that Totty works through his anger issues, and that those special forests – not to mention the glittering lakes and lush savannas – receive all the protection they deserve.

How to do it

Rainbow Tours (020 7666 1260; rainbowtours.co.uk) is offering a 12-day tour of Uganda from £8,960 per person. The price is based on two people sharing on a full-board basis and includes international and internal flights with Kenya Airways, Uganda gorilla permit, Uganda gorilla habituation experience permit, chimpanzee habituation experience permit, plus all transfers and game drives.