Updated
Night game drives give you the best chance in Uganda of seeing leopards, hyenas and the small nocturnal animals that hide by day, such as genets, civets, bushbabies and white-tailed mongooses. They are run with a ranger and a spotlight in some savannah parks, including Lake Mburo, Queen Elizabeth and Murchison Falls, usually for two to three hours after dusk. In forest parks such as Kibale and around Bwindi, guided night walks replace drives. Here is what to expect and where to go.
What you may see
The main prize is the leopard, which hunts mostly at night and is far easier to find with a spotlight than in daylight. Spotted hyenas, side-striped jackals, servals and civets are possible, along with hippos grazing far from the water, bushbucks and owls. Lake Mburo is especially good for leopards and hyenas. In the dry season in Murchison and Queen Elizabeth, you may see nightjars, including the striking standard-winged nightjar. See our guides to leopards in Uganda and the standard-winged nightjar.
How night drives work
Night drives are booked through the Uganda Wildlife Authority or a lodge with permission to operate them, and an armed ranger always accompanies the vehicle. A guide sweeps the bush with a red-filtered or white spotlight looking for eyeshine, then holds the beam to the side of an animal rather than in its eyes, to reduce disturbance. Drives usually start around 7 pm and last two to three hours. Fees are charged per person on top of park entry, and availability varies by park, so book ahead and check current rules.
Night walks in the forest
In Kibale, guided night walks from Kanyanchu look for pottos, bushbabies, tree hyraxes, chameleons and night insects. Around Bwindi, some lodges and community guides run short evening walks on the forest edge, but you cannot enter the park itself at night. Wear long trousers and sturdy shoes, bring a headlamp, and keep the light off the animals’ eyes for long. See our guide to night sounds of Bwindi.
Photography and ethics
Bright lights and flashes can dazzle animals and expose them to predators, so use a high ISO and a fast lens rather than flash, and accept that some sightings are for watching rather than photographing. Never ask your guide to chase an animal with the light. Night drives make a good addition to a gorilla trip; the gorilla permit costs US$800, or US$600 in April, May and November. See our guide to Lake Mburo.
Frequently asked questions
In some savannah parks, notably Lake Mburo, Queen Elizabeth and Murchison Falls; check availability.
Leopards, hyenas, genets, civets, bushbabies, hippos and nightjars.
No. Bwindi is closed to visitors at night; treks run in the day only.
Usually two to three hours after dusk.
Night Game Drive Safety and Wildlife Access
Night game drives in Uganda’s national parks are managed through the same UWA permit system as day activities but are restricted to specific areas within each park where the road quality and ranger escort provision allow safe vehicle operation after dark. The primary safety consideration is not wildlife danger but road condition — Uganda’s savannah park road networks include sections that are navigable in daylight with careful attention but which present genuine hazard in darkness without the spatial reference that daylight provides. Night drives are therefore typically restricted to the areas immediately adjacent to the main park road circuits rather than the full park road network.
The wildlife access that night drives provide is qualitatively different from the day drive experience, covering the species and behaviours that the day’s full sun suppresses. The African civet — rarely seen on day drives — forages actively along night game drive roads near the forest edge. Leopards, which are among the hardest daytime sightings in Uganda’s parks, are encountered more frequently on night drives when their nocturnal activity schedule overlaps with the vehicle’s movement. The large owl species — Verreaux’s eagle-owl, the barn owl, the African wood-owl — are exclusively night drive sightings. Visitors who complete both a day game drive and a night drive at the same park compare them as two separate experiences in the same landscape rather than as a redundant repetition.
The night drive’s operational structure — a vehicle with a high-powered spotlight mounted on a bonnet bracket, moving slowly through the park’s designated night drive routes with a ranger and a spotter — creates a viewing geometry that is geometrically different from the day drive’s ambient light conditions. The spotlight’s narrow beam isolates individual animals from the surrounding darkness in a way that makes the night drive experience visually more dramatic than the day drive’s diffuse light allows. The reflection of predators’ tapetum lucidum — the eye shine that the spotlight produces at varying distances — creates a specific identifying technique that rangers use to detect nocturnal animals before the spotlight’s illumination makes their species and behaviour visible.
