KIBALE LODGE UGANDA

A ridgetop paradise is doing its bit for both humans and primates.

- Meera Dattani

I could stay for hours right here. After a morning jungle hike tracking flighty chimpanzees, I'm at the edge of a pool on a nearly 4,700-foot-high ridge, gazing over lush hillsides, crater lakes, and little homesteads towards the soaring peaks of the Rwenzori, the Mountains of the Moon. But, alas, a sauna and coconut oil massage beckon.

Kibale Lodge, the latest property from Volcanoes Safaris, is in a lush pocket of western Uganda, half an hour from the Kibale Forest. Considered the primate capital of the world, the forest is home to a 1,500-strong chimpanzee community as well as 12 other primate species. Volcanoes Safaris has been pioneering great ape ecotourism in the Great Lakes region for more than 25 years, and Kibale follows a tried-and-tested recipe. Its lodges are inspired by an unaffected traditional village style known as kienyeji in Swahili. The warm, inviting vibe is embodied by the staff, too, mostly from Rwanda, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Burundi, and almost all from nearby communities.

Volcanoes founder and conservation philanthropist Praveen Moman has roots in Uganda dating back to 1905. His natureloving father was posted to East Africa under the British Empire. Moman was 12 when he walked along the Virunga foothills near Mgahinga National Park and 16 when he left to go to school in the UK in 1970. His family followed in 1972, the year that then president Idi Amin expelled all Asians from Uganda.

It's a story I'm familiar with, as a secondgeneration British Ugandan Asian whose family also left in 1972. While some, including my uncle and aunt, returned to Uganda from the mid-1980s, it wasn't typically for conservation. When Moman returned over two decades after his departure, he was inspired by the people, landscapes, and wildlife of his youth. Those childhood walks in the wilderness had lit a fire in him.