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Eight lodges, one country, no chain
Nature Lodges is a small Ugandan company. We run eight lodges, camps and guesthouses, each with roughly ten to fifteen rooms, in the places most people come to Uganda to see. That is the whole of it.
We are not the most expensive way to travel here, and we have never tried to be. What we offer is a good bed in a remarkable place, food cooked fresh, and staff who know the ground around them.
Why eight and not one
Uganda’s best parks are spread across the country, and getting between them takes days rather than hours. Guests kept asking the same question at check-out: where should we stay next? Eventually there was an answer for every stop on the route.
That is why the eight exist. From the guesthouse ten minutes off the runway in Entebbe, west to the forests of Kibale and Bwindi, south to Lake Mburo, north to the Nile at Murchison and on to Kidepo, you can book an entire Uganda itinerary with one team and one confirmation. Combine several and the rate goes down rather than up.
Every lodge built around a different idea
No two of the eight look alike. Each was built around what its own site offered: the rock outcrop at Lake Mburo, Karamojong materials and craft at Kidepo, the old river forts on the Nile at Murchison. Stay at four of them and you get four different places, not one design repeated four times.
Fort Murchison
A fort above the Albert Nile, in the spirit of the old river expeditions.
Bush Lodge
Canvas and thatch on the Kazinga Channel, with dinner around the fire.
Kidepo Savannah
A restaurant on a rock outcrop, built with Karamojong materials and craft.
Travellers Rest
A hotel with a past, long associated with Dian Fossey and her work.
Kibale Forest Camp
Canvas at the forest edge, under a double-storey restaurant that looks over the trees.
Eagle's Nest
A camp on a rock hilltop, with the plains and their zebra and giraffe below.
Gorilla Valley Lodge
Rooms turned to face the rainforest, a short way from where the trekking groups set out.
Airport Guesthouse
A garden ten minutes from the runway, built for the first night and the last.
The people are the point
Our teams are Ugandan and most of them live within reach of the lodge they work at. They know which road washes out in the rains, where the lions were yesterday, and which of the birds in the garden is worth getting the binoculars out for.
Ten to fifteen rooms is small enough that someone notices when you come back from a drive.
Reservations are handled by one team in Uganda rather than an agency abroad, which is why you can send a rough plan and get a real answer back, usually within a day.
Working where we are
We are a Ugandan business employing Ugandan teams, buying locally where we can, and running lodges that sit inside or beside protected areas. That brings responsibilities and we take them seriously.
We would rather describe what we actually do than make claims we cannot back. If you want to know how a particular lodge handles water, waste, power or its relationship with the community next door, ask us and we will tell you straight.
Nature Lodges in numbers
8
Lodges, camps and guesthouses
10–15
Rooms at a typical property
6
National parks within reach
Come and see for yourself
Tell us roughly what you want from Uganda and we will suggest a route through it.