Uganda's 'wild places'

The Boma is a charming boutique hotel set amid tropical gardens on the outskirts of Entebbe. A restored colonial homestead full of its original 1940’s character, the hotel is perfect for hopping off the plane and making a welcoming first stop in Uganda.

Kidepo had no takers until the Wildplaces, who judged the park would not last unvisited; Apoka is still the only full-service safari lodge inside. The place stays small, canvas on a shoulder of granite with baths cut straight from the rock, and you can drive all morning without meeting another vehicle. The guides helped bring this wildlife back, the Nubian giraffe especially. Cheetah occur in no other Ugandan national park. You are not observing a wilderness that would exist without you. You are financing its survival.

Semliki runs on a different logic, starting with the founding: Wright re-equipped the rangers before he built a tent, and Uganda's oldest reserve, his lodge alone inside it, has been refilling since. What we tell people first is that the whole reserve is yours, every drive of it, from a candlelit camp on the hill. The wildlife is the rare kind: both elephants and their hybrids, chimpanzees under study with Indiana University, shoebill on Lake Albert. It is a list no other lodge in Uganda can match.

A community-owned gorilla lodge in the fullest sense: the community is the landlord, the revenue funds their schools, clinics, and water supply. The stone cottages are handsome, the butlers earn their keep, and the Virunga panorama rewards the altitude. Nkuringo's terrain is the steepest in Bwindi; the trek is demanding, the access remote, with no pool or tropical warmth on return. For fit adults who want the gorilla encounter at its most direct, this is the lodge that was built to deliver it.