Explore Uganda’s beauty: The Kyambura Gorge: home of chimpanzees and diverse bird species

Getting closer to the place, it looks boring. The only welcoming structures in sight are huts belonging to the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) guides and gorge rangers.
Kyambura Gorge which is part of the Queen Elizabeth National Park or Mweya, as it is known in Western Uganda, is common for Chimps tracking, amazing birding and forest walk.
A barricade at which gate collection fees are paid stops you to clear fees for chimp tracking or guide fees as you go through security checks before entering the park.
Upon entering, sounds of water flowing inside the gorge with birds squeaking attract you to the viewing point erected meters above it. As you move on to discover the water’s source, you are welcomed with the exciting hidden secret of a tropical forest growing in a depression that leaves you marveled at how this could have come up.
According to Ben Ejwadu, a senior guide at the Kyambura Gorge, the Gorge was created about 10,000 years ago when land faulted after two opposing forces pulled adjacent to each others causing the 500-metre wide and 100-metre deep depression.
For several years, this tropical forest started emerging and attracted several primates, birds and wildlife,” explained Ejwadu.
Although I did not get time to trek the 16km gorge and the huge Kyambura River, Ejwadu says, they always take visitors through the forest walk to see rare huge and tall trees in the tropical forest, flowers, giant cobwebs, various bird species, colourful butterflies, black and white monkeys and colorful fruits. “Trekking through the Gorge could take about one to three hours where there is a family of habituated chimpanzees,” he says. “Trekking time depends on how far the chimpanzees are feeding or resting from.”
Ejwadu further explains that there are black and white Columbus monkeys, red tailed monkeys, blue monkeys, vervet monkeys and the great apes – chimpanzees that excite tourists as they move around on tree branches in the forest.
The place, according to UWA officials, receives about 260 to 300 visitors a month. These mainly come for chimpanzee tracking.
UWA officials at the gorge are mainly challenged by illegal timber harvesters, firewood collectors and weak tourists who may fail to climb or the step gorge down to the bottom.
Guides and rangers are forced to carry tourists who fail to move because vehicles and helicopters cannot access this thick forest canopy.
The guide notes that the gorge is divided into blocks that make chimps move from one block to another looking for fruits. This sometimes makes trekking these chimps hard. He says: “Huge tree branches sometimes fall, blocking the trails that make movement hard but guides always move with machetes to clear such obstacles along the way.”
Ejwadu says Ugandans are allowed to view the gorge from the viewing point at no cost but pay Shs30,000 for tracking while foreigners are charged $50 (about Shs129,463) for tracking.