Meet the Cousins: A Chimpanzee Journey

It’s dawn and all is still. A slow rising sun throws dappled light through the canopy of trees and a few butterflies, tarted in electric blue shades, gather in the patch of sunlight. Following the faint muddy trail through the forest, the guide pauses, cocks his head to the side and listens carefully to the silence. “Sometimes they can be hard to find”, he tells the group before continuing to walk deeper into the forest. But then, quite suddenly, a blood curdling scream echoes through the forest. We don’t need the guide to tell us what creature made this noise. The screaming increases in volume, others join in and moments later a troop of chimpanzees hurtles through the forest. Some of the big males pause to thump a drum beat on the trunks of giant trees and the screaming crescendos. And then suddenly they are all around us. A dozen excited chimpanzees smashing, crashing, screeching, panting. They are no more than a few metres away now. Their eyes occasionally locking onto ours. It’s hard to know whether to be thrilled or terrified by this moment.

Chimpanzees and humans share 98.8% of the same DNA. Incredibly, this is more than African and Indian elephants share. This means that seeing our closest cousins up close and personal is a wildlife encounter unlike any other. It’s not just the heart stopping moment when a large chimpanzee races through the forest toward you but it’s when they turn to stare you in the eye and you feel as if you’re looking back at yourself. The moment is so powerful that even mountain gorilla trekking comes a distant second compared to chimpanzee tracking.

This journey, through the chimpanzee forests of Uganda, is the ultimate chimpanzee experience. Over the course of eleven days, we will visit four different chimpanzee reserves scattered across the beautiful mountainous and forested landscapes of western Uganda to meet dozens of habituated chimpanzees and to talk to those working with and studying these most intelligent of creatures. Most people visiting the chimpanzees in Uganda are limited to just one hour per day with the chimps, but on several days of this journey Samgai Journeys offers the unique experience of chimpanzee habituation. This means you will spend several hours in the company of rangers and scientists (and often without any other tourists) helping to habituate a group of chimpanzees to tourist visits.

While the focus of this journey is firmly on the chimps there’s plenty more to experience on this journey. We will witness the power of one of the most impressive waterfalls in Africa, search for lions and elephants in the savannahs, go birdwatching in the swamps, aid researchers working on a butterfly and insect survey in the rain forest and learn about chimpanzee conservation. And if, after all that, you still want to see the mountain gorillas then we can slot that onto your itinerary as well.