Kibale Forest National Park is a mainly forested park in the western part of Uganda, it is known to host 13 species of primates, the chimpanzee being the resident primate that signifies the conservation area. The largest population of chimpanzee in Uganda live in the Kibale forest and others distributed in the Queen Elizabeth National Park, in the Kyambura gorge, Budongo forest in Murchison Falls National Park, and the Maramagambo forest, situated at the edge of Queen Elizabeth National Park the primates have been scientifically proven to share upto 98% of the human DNA, the major Attraction of the national park is the chimpanzee it is the one-stop center to see primates in their original homes.
Uganda’s Major entry point is the Entebbe International Airport when thinking of flying to Uganda for primates, it is from here that your tour operator will transfer you to the next destination, local domestic flights operate transfers between parks to enhance on guest experience, and there are flights that run on daily to the national park from Entebbe or Kampala Kajjansi, companies operating these include Fly Uganda, Aerolink Uganda, Bar aviation. Flights can be scheduled or chartered. An aerial view of the western part of Uganda is amazing through the hills and mountains winding in the region, rivers passing flowing downhill.
Scheduled flights land at the Kasese, Mweya, or Semliki airstrip, it takes 1hr30mins to land, airline companies fly at different time intervals in the afternoon, and morning time, the routing of the day depends on flight pickups and drop off, a few days towards your flight, these tend to communicate the actual flight time to guests if you booked directly or through your tour operator. Flying to Kibale Forest National Park is done best during the dry season in the months of December, February, January, July, June, August, and early September, it is during this time that there arefewer rains, minimal delays due to bad weather conditions, aircraft during the rainy season sometimes find it disorganizing and hard to fly.
Chimpanzee tracking is the main reason for Flying to Kibale Forest National Park, the activity is done in 2 sessions, in the morning at 8:00 am and 2:00 pm east African time, guides from the Uganda Wildlife Authority will lead you through the forest, the trek takes about 2-3 hours looking for man’s closest relatives, they live in the forest together with the black and white colobus monkeys, red-tailed monkeys, grey checked mangabey, blue monkeys to mentiona few, primate activity has been done since 1993 when the national park was forest gazette as a protected area. Birding in Kibale Forest
Other ways of reaching Kibale Forest National Park besides flying to the destination include driving to Kibale Forest National Park, it takes 6 hours to drive to the national park from Entebbe -to Kibale, the park can be accessed through different routes including the animal buffer zone south of Queen Elizabeth national park, on a lucky day you may be chanced to see tree climbing lions in the fig trees.