Kyambura Game Reserve: Uganda’s Latest Wildlife Secret
“I am finding it very hard to leave this place this morning …” I catch myself writing in the visitor’s book. I look around for my two travel companions, wanting to get them into our car for the long drive back to Kampala. Victoria, my wife, has contrived to wander off, unresponsive, towards a nearby hippo pool, and my son, Alasdair, is sat grim faced in a corner, muttering into his coffee about how he could stay here for the rest of his life, even if he had to dig his own toilet every morning and live in a bush. I briefly consider sending a message to the lodge’s Head Office to allow us to stay an extra night…
We have just had the pleasure of a three-night stay at Uganda’s latest luxury property, The River Station, and its nearby companion tented camp, Honey Bear Bush Camp. Our reluctance to leave a Wild Places property is nothing new. In March 2024, on our way home from Papa’s Bush Camp in Murchison Falls (read my blog post from then), I had to stop the car in the middle of the vast savannah to allow four adults to engage in a profound debate about whether it was worth going home anyway.
The River Station and Honeybear are the latest manifestations of Jonathan and Pamela Wright’s adventure into opening up parts of Uganda that nobody else has heard of, and this time, they’ve brought us to Kyambura Game Reserve. This long-forgotten and long-neglected wilderness area is located to the east of Queen Elizabeth National Park, bordered to the west by the Kyambura Gorge, to the north by the Kazinga Channel, and to the south and east by villages and smallholder farms. Importantly, and reassuringly, the reserve is out of touching distance from Uganda’s border with the DRC.
Initially set up as a controlled hunting area in the 1960’s, the 156-square kilometre Kyambura gained the status of Wildlife Reserve in 1996. The hunting concession that existed was terminated in 1999, leaving the wildlife at the mercy of subsistence poachers mostly hunting hippopotamus and antelope.
With the construction of Honeybear in 2023, and the completion in late 2024 of The River Station, has come an added and very welcome conservation and law-enforcement spotlight from the Uganda Wildlife Authority. The partnership between Wild Places and UWA involves training and capacity building for park rangers to help reinforce their guiding and visitor-handling skills, cutting of new tracks, development of tourism activities, facilitation and funding of law -enforcement boats on the Kazinga Channel, and control of invasive plant species, specifically sickle-bush and spear grass. It also stresses, as a priority, the recruitment and training of lodge staff sourced from within a 50-kilometre radius of the properties. All worthy developments, and a testament to the Wrights’ vision and commitment to resurrecting and preserving Uganda’s wild places.
But what of the wildlife? My expectations weren’t high, considering what I knew of Kyambura’s past. On a camping trip here 20 years ago, I saw a few nervous-looking Ugandan Kob in the overgrown grass, was assailed by clouds of mosquitos and left. This time, however, almost from the minute we entered the reserve, my jaw dropped in pleased surprise and remained that way for the next few days.
"What I wasn’t expecting was the sheer number of elephant"
Immediately apparent on the drive in were the plentiful elephant dung and footprints, almost without pause. Every so often the road was crossed by an established hippo trail. This spoor was the harbinger of sightings to come, and over the next few days in camp, it became apparent that The River Station is one of the best places in East Africa to observe hippo and elephant. The lodge’s generous lounge and deck overlook the Kazinga Channel and a section of its south bank, including a resident population of 150-odd hippo. Their sonorous grunting is the lodge’s signature playlist.
What I wasn’t expecting was the sheer number of elephant. They are everywhere in the reserve, and every day at about 11 am they come down to the channel in their dozens to take dust baths and frolic in the water. The ellies judiciously avoid the thickest concentrations of hippo, but it all gets quite busy, and the lodge is perfectly placed for hours of pachydermal voyeurism. Interspersed with the mega herbivores are buffalo, monkey, baboon, monitor lizard, warthog, the odd crocodile and a special treat…decent numbers of elusive Giant Forest Hog. Also in attendance are an enchanting array of birds: pelicans, kingfishers, herons, eagles, guineafowl and stilts amongst many others. The cacophony that accompanies a 7am breakfast on the deck is something quite special, and the magic continues through to the evening. We found it ridiculously easy to ensconce ourselves in a chair with a long lens and a pair of binoculars and not even think of leaving the lodge for the entire day.
Leave we occasionally did, though. On our arrival at Honey Bear, Victoria and I preferred to sit by the water and unwind, but Alasdair went out on a game drive that culminated in a very special bush sundowner. The invasive sickle-bush and spear grass does cut down lines of sight and keep wildlife away, but with the program for the reduction of invasive species about to get underway, game drives will gradually get better as areas with short, cropped grass grow in size.
Another morning saw us bumping along in the back of a land rover, heading out for a two-hour bush walk along rim of one of the crater lakes to the south of the reserve. These “explosion craters” are part of a huge field that dot this part of western Uganda, and in Kyambura, each one serves as a mini-Ngorongoro, providing water and clear lines of sight, and therefore refuge, for, amongst other, Ugandan Kob, waterbuck and buffalo. On our walk, our UWA ranger Ruth adroitly guided us past a couple of placid elephant bulls making their way down to the crater floor. The Rift Valley feel was complete when we spotted a distant flock of pink flamingo on the shimmering surface of the water.
Another lovely thing to do is to explore the Kazinga Channel by boat. One can do this on one of the lodge’s small, motorised launches, suited to photographers trying for low level shots of mammals and birds on the banks. The launches also serve as transfer vessels for the lodge, ferrying guests to and from the pickup points where they have arrived from elsewhere in Uganda, or where they reunite with their vehicles to take them chimp tracking in the Kyambura Gorge or game driving in Queen Elizabeth National Park.
For the ultimate sundowner cruise in Uganda, I recommend a trip out on the Mona Lisa, a Lamu dhow that Jonathan found on the Kenya coast and had refurbished and shipped to Uganda, complete with its Swahili dhow captain, Saidi. To be under sail on a beautiful inland stretch of water as the sun goes down, with a perfectly concocted cocktail in hand, watching the hippos blow in the dying light, was a first, even for us. Under Saidi’s watchful eye, Alasdair got to helm the whole way, adding another feather to his sailing cap.
"Brenda, the manager of Honey Bear, was a capable and welcoming host"
After a day’s activities in the reserve, the lodge awaits. Honey Bear is a purist’s mobile tented camp, albeit with flush toilets. Identical in size and design to Papa’s Camp in Murchison Falls, these sorts of camps are always, for me, a great way to experience the bush. Good food and drink, convivial dinners, large comfortable tents, bucket showers and a bare millimetre’s thickness of canvas separating one from the bush. The nocturnal sounds of hippos chomping grass a few feet away, the booming whoop of a hyena, and the croaking of nearby eagle owls all let one know that one has travelled quite some distance from the nearest Waitrose. Brenda, the manager of Honey Bear, was a capable and welcoming host, taking care to make us feel at home and being attentive to our needs. Specifically, she arranged for Alasdair to have some Anglophone company on an all-French game drive and, on hearing that he is a sailor, arranged for him to drive the dhow a day later. Our transfer to The River Station the next day was carried out discreetly and seamlessly, and we came back from morning activities to find our luggage waiting for us in our new rooms.
The River Station is at another level altogether, and had us feeling very special indeed when we walked in. It’s definitely a “7-wow” lodge, these being expressed along the way from the jetty where we arrived by boat, to the main dining, the deck, the bar, the room, the private verandah, the private plunge pool and the bathroom. It’s beautifully located, laid out and finished, and I lost no time in getting Victoria to pose for a photoshoot, framed by the Lamu doors. Thanks to chef Dennis, the food is an absolute triumph. There wasn’t a single mouthful that wasn’t bursting with flavour, and the portions and presentation were top class. Gift and Barnabas in the dining room were a pair of service mavens, preternaturally anticipating our needs, and Alex the barman mixed us G&T’s that caused our bottom lips to tremble with delight. The entire show is run by Gabriel Jones, a guide and lodge manager with extensive experience in Kenya. He was an entertaining and informative host, finding time in his busy schedule to dine with us and personally take us out into the reserve on a game drive and a boat cruise. Gabriel has been involved in setting up the lodge and is currently helping to develop the reserve’s tourism offer.
The hidden gem of the team was Martin, our night guard tasked with shepherding us to our rooms after dinner. On each short walk to the room, he regaled us with natural history anecdotes, from picking up a three-inch beetle to show us how its legs moved, to showing us videos of a forest cobra he had once spotted outside our room, to explaining that one must avoid at all costs getting bitten by one of the bullet ants we encountered (“your foot will swell up like a football”), to relating how he once rounded the corner with some clients and ran smack bang into Eric, the huge bull elephant that sometimes hangs around the lodge.
It was all quite special, and it came to an end far too early for our liking. One could easily spend 4-5 nights in this fabulous location. Going forward, we will certainly be talking about it to our clients and agents.
Kyambura Game Reserve, together with Papa’s Camp and the soon-to-be-opened Kulu Ora in Murchison Falls, offers a superb wildlife experience to the discerning traveller.
Patrick Shah, The Far Horizons Safaris.