uganda & kenya: bwindi gorillas and the migration

Good odds, and yes, three nights on the ridge leave room for two mornings.

Nobody can promise a wild animal, but we put the odds at better than 95 per cent, because trackers are out at dawn picking each family up from the nests it built the night before.

The Nkuringo sector holds four habituated families and eight visitors a day may go to each, so a second trek is a question of what is left for your dates rather than of room in the forest. We secure the permits before anything else is booked, and can apply for two at additional cost.

Either way the time with the animals is one hour, counted from when they are reached, and trekkers must be 15 or over.

It is the one long travelling day in nine nights, and it runs through two airports.

From the Nkuringo side of Bwindi you go by road to the nearest airstrip and fly to Entebbe, or drive the whole way, and then take an international flight on to Nairobi.

Kenya's safari aircraft use Wilson Airport, on the far side of the city from the international terminal, so there is a transfer between the two and then a separate hop out to the Mara, typically in a Cessna Caravan that may call at another airstrip on the way.

Luggage on those aircraft is 15 kilograms a person in soft bags, hand luggage counted. The workable combination changes with the timetables, so we settle the flights at planning stage, and where a day leaves no margin we put a night in Nairobi into the route instead.

Time, and time is exactly what a crossing needs.

Five nights in one Mara camp is unusually long and it changes the shape of the days: with a vehicle, a guide and a spotter to your party alone, you can stay with a leopard all morning or leave before first light without fitting in around anyone else.

On crossings, be realistic. The herds occupy the wider Mara from roughly July into October, and the places where they actually enter the water lie inside the national reserve, a full day out from the conservancy. Even there nothing runs to a timetable: a herd may go in within minutes, hold the bank for days, or turn away.

Three or four days in the right months gives a fair chance, so five nights is a real advantage. Outside those months, come for the resident cats.

Partly, and the gorillas decide it.

The Uganda Wildlife Authority sets a minimum age of 15 for gorilla trekking and it is applied at the briefing, so a younger child cannot go into the forest and somebody would have to stay behind at the lodge.

The Kenyan half is another matter. The Mara camp is suited to families young and old, it has five tents of which one is a family unit, and a private vehicle means a morning can be cut short for a tired child without costing anyone else their drive.

The first night by Lake Victoria is gentle too, with kayaks and guided forest walks. So it works well for a family with teenagers, and less well with younger children unless the Uganda days become a stay and not a trek.

Tell us their ages and we will say what is possible.

July, August and September carry our highest rating at every stop, and they are also when the herds are in the wider Mara, which is the point of pairing these two places.

January and February are the other pair we rate highest throughout, dry in Bwindi and strong for resident game in the Mara, without the migration.

June, October and December are in-between months, good in one half of the route and mixed in the other.

March and November are rated challenging in Bwindi, and November is challenging around Entebbe too, so on a nine-night trip that leans on a single gorilla permit they are worth avoiding. The long rains of April and May sit at the bottom of our ratings on both sides of this trip.

The greener months are not wasted: permits come easier, rates drop, the plains are green with newborn animals, and cloud gives even light in a dark forest.

Yes, and the obvious additions sit at either end.

Uganda's other primates are within reach of the same trip: the chimpanzees of Kibale Forest, or the golden monkeys and the single gorilla family at Mgahinga, each of which adds two or three nights on the Ugandan side.

At the Kenyan end the coast is a short flight from the Mara, and three or four nights by the sea is the usual way to finish.

What is fixed is the permit. It names a park and a date, and only eight people a day may visit a family, so that date settles first and everything else moves around it. The Mara camp is small, five tents, so its dates go in early too.

The one change we would argue against is trimming the three nights in Bwindi, because a single permit with no spare morning is a thin plan.