Budongo Forest

Budongo Forest is located North West of Kampala approximately 3 hours drive on your way to Murchison Fall National Park. The forest is sited on an area of 825km and is part of the Murchison Falls Conservation Area.

Budongo Forest is at an elevation of between 1110 to 1600m above sea level with moist and semi deciduous forest. The Budongo Forest is one of the top destinations for chimpanzee trekking in Uganda with its tourism site at Kaniyo Pabidi, 8 km from Kichwambanyobo gate approximately 30 minutes’ drive.

Budongo Forest is beautiful and worth a stopover for an early morning chimp tracking excursion. It supports roughly 800 chimpanzee individuals which live in communities. Over 200 of these have been habituated for tourism. The rest have been reserved for research purposes since the 1970s (by Dr. Jane Goodall-the World's foremost expert on Chimpanzees). The 465 plant species that have been recorded at Budongo Forest makes it one of the most ecologically diverse forests in East Africa. Budongo Forest has the most gigantic trees in Uganda - with several mahoganies whose width is as huge as nine men combined. Most of them rise up to a height of 60m.

Top activities done in Budongo Forest;

• Chimp trekking – this is done at Kaniyo Pabidi tourism site run by the Jane Goodall Institute.
• Birding – Budongo Forest boosts of about 360 bird species with 2 endemics found no where else in East Africa
• Nature walks – the forest’s rich biodiversity gives one a rewarding walk in to the jungle with; 290 butterfly species, 103 moths species, and 465 tree species dominated by giant mahogany and iron wood  trees.