#10 Warring warthogs – a walking safari in Kyambura Game Reserve

Jun 11, 24

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Episode 10. Warring warthogs – a classic tented camp and walking safari in Kyambura Game Reserve

Charlotte: Welcome to the East Africa Travel Podcast. I’m your host Charlotte Beauvoisin, author of Diary of a Muzungu, episode 10. Woohoo! We’re on double figures!

Very excited to be talking to you today from Jinja, the source of the Nile, in eastern Uganda, on Lake Victoria. I’ve spent the weekend here next to the River Nile, at the source of the river, on Lake Victoria, and visiting the Uganda Railway Museum, and catching up with friends and colleagues in tourism including Nash – Hi Nash! – owner of the very cool Jinja Backpackers in town.

Just spent last night here at Jinja Jungle: a beautiful place owned by Lucy and Saleem, five kilometres down from the lake overlooking the River Nile, a really fun glamping site. As you can hear, gorgeous birds all around me, monkeys, four dogs, very well behaved, until they hear the monkeys. I slept in a converted shipping container, so that was really fun. I’m now preparing to get the bus to Nairobi. Overnight bus for me, a couple of hours to cross the city, then I will be getting on the train down to Mombasa. I’m heading for a sustainable tourism conference at Shanzu Beach, at the Serena Mombasa Resort and Spa, one of my favourite destinations in a glorious part of the coast.

Hoping to spend the night in Old Town, Mombasa tomorrow night, and then later I’ll be heading to Diani.

On today’s episode, we’re going to go on safari. I’m going to tell you about a recent trip with Philip Briggs, a travel writer. I invited myself to tag along on this one.

And we were hosted by Jonathan Wright and The Uganda Safari Company. The lodge side of their business is known as Wildplaces. And we stayed at Honey Bear Camp, which is on the southern bank of the Kazinga Channel towards Lake George. Really fabulous spot. I can’t wait to hear what you think of this week’s episode.

I had such a lot of fun recording hippos, warthogs fighting, and of course, a splendid variety of birds. Kyambura Game Reserve is a private concession, and it’s in Queen Elizabeth Conservation Area, outside the main Queen Elizabeth National Park that is so famous.

On today’s episode we have a walking safari, we have a boat ride, we have a bush breakfast and we have no end of interesting conversations.

Thanks to everyone who’s been listening to the first episodes, it’s such fun to hear your feedback. It was great to hear from Simon MacArthur in Australia who said how much he enjoyed the personal nature of the podcasts and he said “they’re great for long solo drives, like having you in the passenger seat.”

It’s quite curious you know, I’ve invited you into my world and I’m hearing how I’m part of your world, too. It’s quite eye opening. My friend in Portugal said how amazing it was to hear the sounds of the jungle while she was waiting for a train in Lisbon and a friend in Paris said something similar that it was fun to have the sounds of the forest.

So do get in touch. Do let me know where you are and how you’re listening to the podcast and what do you think of all the episodes so far?

Charlotte: I’m at Honey Bear Bush Camp. A beautiful sound of a frog. And we are in Kyambura Game Reserve, a very rarely, barely visited part of Queen Elizabeth National Park. It’s just so lovely to see a park I know so well from a different perspective. And what an evening it’s been. Lots of hippo. Buffalo. Ibis. Hadada ibis. Sacred ibis. The promise of lions tomorrow morning,  the sound of them at least. We saw a giant forest hog. I’ve seen bats flying around. And we’ve had great company and really fantastic food. Really lovely dinner. And in the middle of it we heard Tom the Ascari say he spotted a leopard. And – as one – we just downed our cutlery and everyone ran outside and – we didn’t actually see the leopard ourselves.

It kind of doesn’t matter because it was just such a fun moment. Yeah, it’s a beautiful night. My first night here and can’t wait to see and hear what we have tomorrow. So we have a boat ride planned on the Kazinga Channel. We’re going to be going towards Lake George.

It’s quarter to three in the morning. Woken up by something very loud. A hippo eating grass outside my tent. So loud. I mean it was literally touching the back wall of the tent. Fantastic!

But I was recharging my batteries for my recorder so I’ve had to move around in total darkness trying to find everything. I was trying to get out the mosquito net and I thought I was going out of the tent.

I wasn’t. I was just exiting the mosquito net. And not that I would have gone out really outside with the hippo there. Even though I’m asleep I wouldn’t have done that. And then I can’t imagine having to put some batteries in the back of some device in the dark when you’ve just woken up, but I did it! So I’ve got a lovely recording of delicious hippo munching and it could hear my every movement.

I was trying to be so deadly silent. and it would have been quite something if I made it jump but it still would have scared me even if I was this side of the canvas. So, back to sleep now, up at six in the morning for a crater walk.

Bush breakfast on the southern bank of the Kazinga Channel, Kyambura Game Reserve, at location for the new River Station, lodge under construction by Wildplaces (The Uganda Safari Company)

Charlotte: You were saying there’s a good number of hippo here?

Jonathan Wright: From the drone, we counted 170 to 200 hippo in this bay. It’s the highest density of hippo anywhere in the Kazinga Channel.

Charlotte: Right, fantastic, yes.

Jonathan Wright: It’s a great place, you can walk up, you’ve got cliffs in front of you, so you can get up very close to them. Amazing view, yes. These hippos don’t know it, but their closest relatives are whales and dolphins. They’re an amphibious land mammal. We call them herds or pods. The females, when they break off with the youngsters, it’s called a creche. They do these sound blasts to communicate underwater. And if you actually record them underwater, you can hear them making a clicking noise, just like whales and dolphins as well. So actually, really fast. Cool animal. Yeah. They graze at night and then go back in the water. They have a really interesting territorial thing. The males, the big males within the group will not ever fight with the external males. All the aggression comes internally when a larger male will eventually get displaced. The size of hippos: females actually can be bigger than the male sometimes, so you can’t distinguish them by size. A lot of people go “oh, that’s a big one!” And actually often it’s a female.

Charlotte: How do you sex a hippo from a distance?

Jonathan Wright: You can’t by looking at them. But yeah, this is a great place to see hippos.

Charlotte: This is a fantastic place. You didn’t think to name the new lodge after Hippos?

Jonathan Wright: No, not really. We called it the River Station because, you know, in the old days, you used to have hill stations and river stations where people used to go to relax. And so we call this the River Station because it’s here and people come in and out and what have you.

Charlotte: So this is the site for the new lodge, isn’t it? Really beautiful spot. I’ve not been to this part of the Kazinga Channel before.

Jonathan Wright: It’s different.

Charlotte: Really fabulous. I’ve just associated it so strongly with the boat ride that you do it on the Mweya Peninsula side (of QENP).

Jonathan Wright: This is really unspoilt. Yeah. Fabulous park.

Charlotte: You know, when I worked with Uganda Conservation Foundation, I used to do the fundraising proposals for Kasenyi and Mweya and so on but I never came down here, so it’s fantastic to be here.

Jonathan Wright: Well, that’s why I run safaris. I’ve been chasing animals around in these places for years.

Emily Willis: Would you have coffee, Johnny?

Jonathan Wright: And then you also get some of the southern birds reach up here, so it’s kind of right in the middle zone. And then all the different habitats so your resident bird species are incredible. Semliki National Park, that’s a place you need to go sometime. On the other side of the mountain over there is the edge of the Ituri. If you look at your rare bird species: dwarf hornbills and stuff like that, all the different greenbuls and pittas and God knows what.

Charlotte: Lots of hornbills as well, aren’t there? Forest hornbills.

Philip Briggs: That’s a very special place, the birding. But you won’t easily just casually bird there, you won’t see much. You need to be around for a couple of days.

Jonathan Wright: Birding in a forest is really weird. Don’t walk in a forest. You know, you go in that forest and you plonk yourself and you find where you want to be and sit. Sit and don’t walk, and gradually it’ll come alive like 20 minutes later. Suddenly you hear things moving on.

Charlotte: They just come to you.

Jonathan Wright: Forest birding.

Charlotte: You have to go with a local expert, really, don’t you? Who knows the bird calls.

Jonathan Wright: Are you a keen birder?

Philip Briggs: Yeah, it’s an interest. I don’t mind if I don’t see an endemic or whatever. I’m not that stressed about it, but I’m happy if I do it at the same time.

Jonathan Wright: So, Gabriel. There’s your swimming pool.

Emily Willis: Hey, hey, hey. Your swimming pool? That’s not his swimming pool!

Philip Briggs: Is that where you get your own swimming pool?

Gabriel Jones: We get plunge pools in the manager’s house there.

Philip Briggs: That’s above average.

Jonathan Wright: We haven’t done that. You get a metal tub and a cold tap. We can do that: like an outside bar, a metal tub with a fire underneath.

Philip Briggs: A cold tap and sunlight soap!

Jonathan Wright: It’s quite nice for a cold tub. You know when it’s 35 to 37 degrees here in the middle of the day? Lovely to get in a metal tub.

Gabriel Jones: So the runs are all down here this way?

Jonathan Wright: No, we have deliberately avoided putting anything in here because this is the route for all the game. So up there, the main lodge is looking both out across the water and down across this valley, and the swimming pool is looking across this way, and then the runs are all down the cliffside. They’re all looking across the channel and the runs are already there.

Gabriel Jones: Okay, nice.

Jonathan Wright: We don’t want to disturb this waterway here, eventually we won’t come down at all. We might clear a few of the invasives and things and open up a little bit and we’ll do plenty of places for bush breakfasts.

A walking safari on Kasenyi Plains with Wildplaces and Uganda Wildlife Authority (after crossing the Kazinga Channel from Honey Bear Camp, Kyambura Game Reserve) 

Charlotte: Gabe, you were saying at the beginning that if we see an animal we should stop, well, certainly not run, but what about if we saw a crocodile, like here?

Gabriel Jones: That would be quite unusual, I must admit, but you mean up here, kind of on dry land, away from the water?

Philip Briggs: I think the crocodile would fuck off so quickly!

Gabriel Jones: Yeah, it wouldn’t like us, but, I mean, it depends on their behaviour. Right? You kind of want to read the situation before you do anything. If you just start running blindly into the bush, you might run into a different problem entirely.

Adam Moore: That’s a good point. Is that a hippo?

Gabriel Jones: Yeah, and there’s some warthogs running around.

Adam Moore: I saw the warthogs and I heard the sounds. I didn’t see the hippo.

Charlotte: I heard crashing into water.

Philip Briggs: If the crocodile was aware of you, it would head to water. Its first thought would not be “oh there’s a person I’m going to eat it.” It would be like “there’s a person there, let me get to water where I’m staying.”

Gabriel Jones: Yeah, yeah. You know, they’re comfortable hunting from water.

Charlotte: So that’s their way of attacking, isn’t it? Drowning you and

Gabriel Jones: Yeah, exactly. And, they can’t just eat you whole, they’ve got to go and bury you and wait for you to

Charlotte: … rot!

Gabriel Jones: And then they’ll come and try and tear a chunk off you and if you’re not ready they’ll take you back down. But yeah, I would hope that up here we’ve got the slight advantage on a crocodile. I mean. Good to check though.

Philip Briggs: I mean, they’re at that level, so, I mean they’d sort of have to trip you up. They would have to be- I mean, it would be a weird thing for crocodile to do; a seriously intelligent crocodile!

Adam Moore: This is good hypothesizing. I’m like… warthogs in the bush.

Charlotte: With very carved gnarled tusks. Oh, Briggs has seen some warthogs fighting. He’s going back to have a quick look. Oh, I can hear them!

Philip Briggs: Yeah, that’s when I first heard them. They’re fighting seriously.

Adam Moore: Yeah, they’re fighting so seriously even we’re not disturbing them.

Charlotte: I’m with James who’s our ranger from Uganda Wildlife Authority and we’re just walking a bit closer to the warthogs who are locked in battle.

James the wildlife ranger guide: You see blood? Blood in this part?

Charlotte: The one on the left. Eh? This one on my side. Eh?

James the wildlife ranger guide: In the left hand, nani. Left hand side. Blood.

Charlotte: We push (forward) a bit? Yes. Yes. Serious battle going on. I think you see blood. Yes. Amazing! We’re about 50 meters away now and they still haven’t noticed us. Hmm. Do you think it must be two males?

James the wildlife ranger guide: When it is fighting, you can even reach and you can touch it on the bum. Big slap!

Charlotte: Wow! One is pushing the other one directly into a bush. Oh, he pushed him through the other side of the bush! Definitely two males. We’re close enough now, we can see their males. Whoa. You can see the blood on the tusk now! Can the tusk break?

James the wildlife ranger guide: Ah, it’s okay.

Charlotte: They look big and very strong. I wonder how old they are.

Oh look, crested crane, grey crowned crane behind them.

Our friends are joining us now.

We’re here in Queen Elizabeth National Park. We’ve just got the boat along Kazinga Channel from Honey Bear Camp, the new Wild Places camp and we’ve had a lovely hour or two birding just literally about to get back on the boat started the boat engine and James the ranger, or maybe it was Philip Briggs who heard the sound of warthogs fighting from several hundred metres away? And they have not flinched. And we’re about 20 metres away now.

Do you see the grey crowned crane behind?

I’ve never seen warthogs fighting before. I wonder how long this has been going on for and how long it will continue. How do you know when there’s a winner? Like at what point?

You missed a classic comedy moment just now because one pushed the other one into this thick bit of bush here, and it looked like he was, gonna get him in a corner.

Gabriel Jones: See that? What’s that? Oh, here we go.

Adam Moore: That’s awesome.

Gabriel Jones: And that’s, that’s usually the end. That was so cool. Oh look, yeah, it’s still running.

Adam Moore: Yeah, I did. You did? Yeah.

Charlotte: Excellent. It was very comical because one pushed the other against what I thought might be the trunk of the tree, but its bum appeared out the other side it just pushed it through the bush. Yeah, you could see the blood on one of the tusks.

Adam Moore: Wow, that was cool.

Charlotte: That was very cool. Wow, what a nice way to end our little safari.

Gabriel Jones: Yeah, that was cool. You’re keeping it for yourself though. We were back at the gate. Yeah, we were like “what’s happening?”

Charlotte: I was like “I want to go that way, but we need to tell them!”

Adam Moore: Oh, yes, you do that. You’ve got to. That’s great. Absolutely.

Charlotte: Oh, this is quite a deep hole!

Gabriel Jones: Yeah, don’t stand in the line of it. That’s actually not in use.

Charlotte: Does it go anywhere?

Gabriel Jones: No, no, it looks like it’s caved in, maybe with all the rain recently. If anyone wants to lie in there, I’ll take a photograph of them.

Adam Moore: You have the honors, I know how to use your camera, I’m good!

Gabriel Jones: There’s lots of warthog spore around, so maybe they’re using it, but it looks like it’s caved in, and maybe they’re trying to dig it out again, but it’s not in use.

Charlotte: You can take a picture of me in it. I’m always game for daft things!

Philip Briggs: You can blog about “the genuine warthog experience.” Well, actually my concept is more you sort of lying in there on your stomach with your snout up!

Adam Moore: Yeah, good picture!

Gabriel Jones: There you go. That’s the spirit. If you’re going to do it. That’s a great picture actually.

In conversation with Jonathan Wright, owner of Wildplaces and The Uganda Safari Company, concessionaire in Kyambura Game Reserve and Murchison Falls National Park

Charlotte: Yeah, that was really good fun. So, you know, it’s immediately a kind of sighting and made it all feel quite edgy as well. And it just got better. So bird life was fabulous. Seeing the pumba (warthog) fighting.

Jonathan Wright: Yeah, that was really fun.

Charlotte: James was very good, the ranger. And we got closer and closer, and, he was giggling away, saying, I’m sure we can get right next to them and touch them, because they’re so absorbed in what they’re doing. That was really fantastic.

Jonathan Wright: I’ve always wanted to put – needed, more than anything – to put a property that would suit the type of clients I deal with in Queen Elizabeth.

But generally, you know, without wanting to sound too rude, some of the government offices really don’t know what a good site is, and they haven’t been established, and they haven’t been researched properly. So, the way our tourism has tended to evolve is something from back in the 1960s: there happened to be a piece of concrete, a hotel there, so that’s what happened, and then you end up with Mweya, and Paraa, and all those places. Someone 50 to 60 years ago did something there. So we’ve almost got no real tourism development within the parks. We have a lot of tourism development outside the parks and we have no new sites to meet the criteria that people look for today.

It’s very different to what someone’s looking for in the 1960s. Now our tourism has evolved. They want bigger rooms. They want plunge pools outside their rooms. They will spend an awful lot more money if they get the right thing, but they really want that and they want to be in the wilderness.

They want the hippo walking by, so to cut a long story short, it was his excellency, the president who invited a lot of investors and they had their consultants from Space for Giants, Ugandans and foreigners, to come into the country and they basically told them “you go and look and tell us – you’re the experts. We’re not the experts. You go and look and tell us what you want.”

So obviously I was one of those people who applied for concessions. They’re not preventing anybody else coming here. They’re just making the prices higher to have less tourism volume so there’s less impact on the wildlife. So we had to pick areas that really there are no other operators at the moment. Nobody has ever used, this area, as far as I’m aware, since Queen Elizabeth National Park started.

And the interesting thing is when people applied, everybody has different ideas. No one applied in the same places. So, even though Great Plains and others applied for concessions in Murchison, there were nowhere near where I was.

Kyambura is not a used game reserve so the government was willing to go for the low use zone in here, we wanted more boat activities, so we’re on the channel, and we’ve agreed a license through the National Parks to keep our boats here, so we pay National Parks for it.

And we also like to conduct our own activities, so we agreed a fee within our bed night structure that a ranger is paid for automatically, whether we use them or not. Even if I don’t walk with a ranger, he’s still getting paid. The National Park is still getting paid.

So, we pay a very elevated concessionary fee in here for the privilege. And I’ve been coming to Kyambura Game Reserve for a long time because I love some of the wildlife things that it has in here. I’ve been to the site many, many times before, just privately. I’d bring my clients here when, because I don’t want to go in a big public area.

But I knew where I wanted to go, basically, great game area, it has the beautiful views of the Rwenzoris, it has lots of private area for walking safaris, it’s got a really nice diverse landscape and diverse habitats and so that’s why I ended up here. Murchison Falls, we’re even more remote. It feels like hundreds of kilometers from any tourism. But we’re still in the biggest part of the National Park.

Really difficult location. No infrastructure to get in. We’ve had to cut tracks ourselves. And, you know, we even paid for all the fuel for all the graders and front loaders to help us get the initial tracking which we have to ford a river which goes up and down when it rains.

You were saying last night, it’s quite exciting. and basically I reckon the poachers could claim squatters rights. They own that place. There’s relatively little law enforcement. Be lucky if a patrol goes in there, I honestly think once before us, once every five or six months, maybe longer. So there’s almost no law enforcement and protection. And yet, it survived. You know, where we are on our concession, there are a hundred hippos there. On our side, there’s probably another hundred on the other side as well. They’ve gone and grazed on the north bank.

There are a good giraffe now in there. There are elephants, but they’re very shy. They’re very scared of people. Still, great lion population. There’s good leopards, but very wild. There are hyena. There are thousands of hartebeest and lots of buffalo.

So it’s kind of perfect for us. And there is a good natural barrier for the low impact zone. There’s a river called the Murchison River which runs off the top of the falls from the Nile and kind of separates that area. So Uganda Wildlife Authority have agreed that becomes a low impact zone as well.

Eventually there will be a bridge and a gate, or a gate and a ford. Right now a lot of the logistics we’re still figuring out. I found, Uganda Wildlife Authority, both the warden and Queen Elizabeth, and the tourism warden, really good guys. They’ve been really helpful and good to work with, so we’ve developed a, great relationship with the parks guys,  even our local warden here in Kyambura, we’re working with very well now. So, yeah, that’s kind of where we are. Lots to do.

Charlotte: Can you tell us about the names of the two camps and where those came from?

Jonathan Wright: The main camp in Murchison Falls is called Kulu Ora, which is a sort of river, which is the Nile, and a dry riverbed, which is where the camp is. There’s a dry riverbed from a kind of creek / stream / river. It’s called the Kisingani River and it runs down into the Nile, and the camp sits right into the corner of that. We call the main camp Kulu Ora. We do have a small kind of private section to it; it’s like a different camp and different style and that’s called Papa’s Camp. And Papa was the name for Ernest Hemingway who went to Murchison Falls. He crashed the plane twice, and spent two nights in the bush.

He was a hell of a character and obviously he’s quite well known. So we thought it was kind of an appropriate historical name to put someone famous in there. And then here (in Kyambura Game Reserve), we decided to call the main camp the River Station because, at times people used to go to hill stations and places like that for rest and recovery. We thought it would be a nice name for here because things are based out of here, people arrive here and you’ll see in the design and the concept how it looks like. I think it’s going to be a lovely thing, and attached to that, is again a similar kind of fabric camping area, which is part of the main camp, but it has a very different feel; it’s more traditional, old style safari type thing, and we’ve called this, Honey Bear Bush Camp, which is named after a character in the movie, Mogambo. And the character is called Honey Bear Kelly, who is a sort of go get type of New York lady.

Tough and strong and out in the bush. And, part of it was filmed in Uganda. and the name came from the character of Ava Gardner in the movie. She came here and, We’ve met the kabaka and all that kind of stuff, and so we thought it was kind of a slightly quirky, slightly off the wall, but very catchy name. So the camp is called Honey bear. And it’s catching on. It’s already catching on.

Charlotte: Yeah, nice backstory. I don’t know the film.

Jonathan Wright: The film’s like African Queen.

Charlotte: African Queen is really good.

Jonathan Wright: Yes the film is a little crazy, you know, it’s almost like a cartoon film, but of course it has Grace Kelly and people like that in it, so it’s a bit of a classic at the same time. And there are a few scenes in it where. It looks very like the old style of tented camp; she showers in an outdoor shower, and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, arriving by river and going by river and all that sort of thing.

Charlotte: I’m gonna have to Google Mogambo and Ava Gardner.

Jonathan Wright: Yeah, I think she’s one of the most beautiful women that’s ever lived.

Charlotte: Yes, I can picture her. Fantastic.

Emily Willis: Are you coming for a little pootle to the pond?

Back under my own canvas

Charlotte: This is Honey Bear Camp. It’s about twelve ish. Whew. Tired. Not sure what time I woke up. Before dawn. Of course I was immediately excited, thinking of Kyambura Game Reserve. I’m on the Kazinga Channel. I’m in the middle of Queen Elizabeth National Park.

Reached for the recorder and kept recording snippets of hippos munching the grass. They’re jumping in the water. And now I’m just having a bit of a rest because it’s really hot. And we’ve had a beautiful boat ride, a bit of a walking safari, bush breakfast. Really fantastic morning and now I’m just gonna lie down for a bit. That’s a hippo in the distance and a big tree full of weavers next to the tent. I’m taking it all in.

There’s a pair of grey crowned cranes by the edge of the channel.

A big thank you to everyone who’s tuned in to the East Africa Travel Podcast, hosted by me, Charlotte Beauvoisin, author of Diary of a Muzungu.

I’ve had some lovely feedback on the first episodes. I had another message from Turaco Treetops, Kibale Forest. Jiri just messaged me saying how much he loves the podcast, although as a lodge manager he does find it hard to find time to listen, “but for ABC Conversations (an Australian podcast), Conan O’Brien and Charlotte Beauvoisin, he always finds the moment to stop the world to have a bit of a laugh and learn something new.” Well, I’m glad I’m entertaining you, Jiri, and I’m quite touched to hear that you’re learning something new because Jiri has lived and worked in East Africa for many years and so if he’s learning something new, then I think we’re doing something right.

Please do get in touch. Tell me what you like. Tell me what you think we should have less of.

I’ve had to learn how to record. I’m still learning how to record and edit and plan and so many other things, but really, the success of this depends on you. Depends on you telling me where I should go next. Depends on you writing some reviews and sharing the podcast with friends and family as well, but much as I know what I want to do with the podcast, which is inspire people, have fun and interesting conversations and promote the whole of East Africa, I also want to know what you think and what we should be talking about.

You’re listening to the East Africa travel podcast hosted by me, Charlotte Beauvoisin, Diary of a Muzungu.

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