In the stillness of the forest, the silence is interrupted by the sound of snapping branches. “It’s the forest elephants moving through the forest,” tells Chelimo Salim in a quiet tone. He’s our gorilla guide on the trek to see the greatest ape on the planet – the gorilla and to be specific, the Mountain gorillas of Bwindi.
The morning mist is rising to reveal the dense forest covering the mountain range of the Virunga volcanoes that stretch into neighbouring Rwanda that is also home to these gorillas.
But at this moment I want to see the unique forest elephants that are rare and adapted to living in the dark, dense forests of Bwindi. Smaller than the African savannah elephants, they have rounded ears and straighter downward pointing tusks which make it easier for them to move through the forest. It’s anybody’s guess how many there are in the forest – estimates waver between 40 and 300.
The sound ebbs as the elephants move deeper into the impenetrable forest that few outsiders knew about until recently. Its sudden claim to fame came with the ‘discovery’ of the Mountain gorillas – and that not even by sight but from their droppings below their night nests when researchers began to venture into the thick forest glades. That was in the 1980s when Uganda was in the midst of political turmoil. Needless to say, this ‘discovery’ made little headlines.
FYI – Bwindi means place of darkness from the Runyakitara word Mubwindi.
Meet the mighty river on its most dramatic stage where it plunges 43 metres on its journey north to drain into the Mediterranean. By RUPI MANGAT
Published: Nation media Sarmag 9 August 2025
The great expanse of water shimmers in the morning light as we fly over it to land in Entebbe, an hour’s flight from Nairobi. Yet less than two hundred years ago, the outside world knew nothing about this lake or the country that we now know of as Uganda.
Back then, Africa’s interior was a closely guarded secret by the Arab traders mainly for slaves, elephant tusks and timber. The mystery of the Nile’s origin became the driving force for the European explorers to enter the unknown. So when John Hanning Speke saw the lake in 1858 from a village near Mwanza in Tanzania, he uttered the unforgettable quote, “The Nile is solved”. He was ridiculed for it. The matter of the Nile was finally solved in 1875 when the journalist-explorer Henry Morten Stanley circumvented Victoria (as Speke christened it after the then British monarch, Queen Victoria), confirming it as the Nile’s source.
From Entebbe to the world’s most powerful falls
The Marina and jetty by the golf course on Lake Victoria at Lake Victoria Serena, Entebbe, Uganda. Image: Rupi Mangat
We’re wrapped in luxury at Lake Victoria Serena Entebbe on the edge of the Great African lake. Our journey into Uganda is to scale the mountains of the impenetrable forest in search of Bwindi’s Mountain gorillas that the outside world only got to know of in 1987 – and that not even by sighting our ape cousins but from the droppings below their night nests.
“The Mountain gorilla is the only subspecies of gorillas that is increasing in number and is now classified as ‘endangered’ from ‘Critically endangered’,” states Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, Uganda’s first wildlife vet. Their numbers have increased from an estimated 300 to 1063 in the wild today.
Dr. Glady Kalema-Zikusoka , Uganda’s first wildlife vet and founder of Conservation Through Public Health
Dr Gladys is a trail blazer. She and her husband Lawrence founded Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) 20 years ago and have achieved international recognition for their ‘One Health’ approach that involves the well-being of the people who live alongside our ape cousin. Dr Gladys’ book, ‘Walking with Gorillas’ is a best seller, copies of which she signs after her presentation to the enraptured group.
The first leg of the journey is to Murchison Falls National Park – a 50-minute flight – to meet the Nile on its most dramatic stage where the mighty river plunges 43 metres through a 7-metre chasm on its 6,000-kilometre journey north to drain into the Mediterranean in the land of the pharaohs.
Murchison on the Nile
It was Baker with his wife Florence who came upon the ‘world’s most powerful waterfall’ in 1864, when looking to solve the Nile’s source – which they did not. They named the falls Murchison after the president of the Royal Geographical Society. However, the wandering couple came upon the lake (which today spans Uganda-DRC border) that glistens in the horizon as we land in 3,893-square-kilometre Murchison Falls National Park at Pakuba airstrip – the lake they named Albert after the British queen’s husband. The duo also documented Karuma Falls, a spectacular series of cataracts along the Nile spanned today by Karuma bridge along the main Kampala-Gulu highway.
The park is lush green like an emerald with towering Borassus palms that our safari guide jokes are planted by elephants! The seed passes through the elephant’s gut and germinates on the ground.
The common patas monkeys watch us from the road side. Unlike other monkeys that prefer trees to terra firma, the patas is mostly seen on ground and with its long legs is a fast runner. Unfortunately the Kenyan patas monkey is extinct in the wild – the Critically Endangered southern patas monkey (E. baumstarki). Found only in northern Tanzania today, the population is between 40–100 mature individuals remaining in the wild.
The Rothschild giraffes grace the plains nibbling on the acacias, Jackson’s hartebeest stand sentinel, a lioness in the tree stops all on track and finally the day ends with a drive to the top of the thundering falls on a road recently tarmacked over the new bridge spanning the Nile, doing away with the iconic ferry crossing.
The following day we sail the Nile to the bottom of the falls. A crocodile slithers into the river; others stay statuesque with jaws wide open to cool down in the afternoon heat. A herd of elephants frolic on the river’s edge hosing themselves with the rich red mud – a spa in the wild. FYI – Baker had by the age of 20, invented a powerful gun to kill an elephant with a single shot.
Pods of hippos pop around in the blue waters and we give them a wide berth. In 1870, Baker’s boat was attacked by an angry hippo on the Nile who munched a large mouthful of the wooden vessel. An hour later we sight the falls – and they never fail to impress. The river has risen and the force of the falls keeps the boats at a distance. All we can do is watch in awe with its permanent rainbow.
The Nile tumbling through a 7-metre gap down 43 metres to the land of the pharoahs. Pic: Rupi Mangat
More on Murchison Falls
It’s easily doable from Nairobi via road or by air with a range of accommodation in and outside the park. Combine the falls for a safari circuit with Budongo or Kibale forests for chimpanzee trekking; Queen Elizabeth National Park and Bwindi for the Mountain gorillas.
Log on to Uganda Wildlife Authority for current park fee.
Published Saturday magazine an insert in Nation newspaper 25 May 2024
Above: Petra Allmendinger birding at breakfast on Global Big Day at Sandai House in Mweiga. Courtesy Petra Allmendinger
Worldwide, the birding community is abuzz on Saturday 11 May to log in as many species of birds as they can to participate in Global Big Day, marking its 10th anniversary. A tech-savvy Kenyan birder has tagged all the spots in the country that birders will be at. Nobody’s birding in Mweiga and so we head that way to check in at Sandai, one of the most scenic houses in the world twixt the two big massifs of Mount Kenya and the Aberdares. It’s a dream farm house with cottages dotted around the expensive grass plains with surreal views of the great massifs on the equator.
Sandai House after the rains green with grass.
Driving in late afternoon, the sky is hung heavy with clouds threatening to burst with the ongoing heavy rains. It’s going to make bird watching a challenge but when a big raptor soars above to land on the tall acacia in the neighbouring Solio Ranch, more famous for its rhinos where you can see up to a mind-boggling 40 in a day, things begin to look up.
Above: Elephants at the waterhole at Voi Wildlife Lodge looking into Tsavo East National Park. Image courtesy.
Published: Saturday magazine in Nation newspaper 4 May 2024
The air is still and sun-baked. I take refuge under the shade of the banda staring into space that is the grandeur of Tsavo East National Park. It’s been 20 years since l sat in the same spot, with the solitary baobab for company at Voi Wildlife Lodge on the edge of the great park.
It’s opportune time to read the new edition of ‘The African Baobab’ by Rupert Watson, lawyer by profession and naturalist by choice. Every page l turn of the full-colour book on baobabs increases my awe of the tree.
Baobab tree in leaf at Voi Wildlife Lodge overlooking Tsavo East National Park. Image Rupi Mangat
Watson writes, ‘For starters, baobabs are living monuments, the oldest natural things in Africa, outlasting every plant and animal on the continent… They survive in the driest, rockiest areas of the continent – yet for all the hostility of much of their habitat, African baobabs live longer and grow larger than most other trees in the world. That is the great paradox of their existence.’
I didn’t know that, and suddenly realize that The African Baobab is one of two books fully dedicated to this living monument, some well over 2,000 years and still standing sentinel on the savannahs.
White-tipped tails hang from the branches above, when suddenly they become animated, leaping from branch to branch of the ancient baobab. They belong to the troop of black and white monkeys searching for a shadier spot to rest and munch on the nutrious leaves of the baobab that on reading The African Baobab by Rupert Watson, I’m excited to realize that the baobab is Africa’s oldest living monument, some going back to the time of the pharaohs some 5,000 years ago although the quintessential tree is not found in Egypt.
Moonlion Safaris 