Most safaris sold to Canadians pass through at least two companies. You pay one, and a different one meets you at the airport. When something goes wrong, the two of them are the first thing you have to understand.

We are registered in Ontario, and run by someone who grew up five kilometres from Bwindi. That is the whole argument, and the rest of this page is the detail behind it.

The Canadian side

Everything here can be checked by you, today, without asking us for anything.

The company	Bashem Safaris Tours and Travel, a Canadian business with its head office at 1610 Crawforth Street, Unit 38, Whitby, Ontario L1N 9B1.
Air travel	Air travel booked in Ontario is arranged through EA Travel and Tours, which holds TICO registration 50016923 and IATA 96527200. Both are checkable on those bodies own registers. We name it here because you are entitled to know which company holds which registration.
On the ground	In Uganda, Bashem own guides and vehicles. In Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania, licensed partners.
Who answers	+1 613 513 9233 and +1 613 699 6221, and info@bashemsafaris.ca. Canadian numbers, answered on Eastern time.

The East African side

Emmanuel Bashitsi grew up in Nyarusiza, a village in Kisoro District in south-western Uganda, within sight of the forests the mountain gorillas live in.

What that changes in practice

He writes the itineraries himself rather than reselling somebody else's.
He has walked the routes he is selling you, in the seasons he is selling them in.
When a permit date or a lodge has to change, the person telling you is the person who chose it in the first place.

What Bashem is not.

Conceding the true thing is the only way the rest of this page is worth reading.

Where a larger operator wins

Departures every week of the year, on fixed dates, whether or not anybody else books.
A call centre at three in the morning.
Hundreds of reviews to read before you decide.

Where we do not compete

We are not the cheapest, and a quote that undercuts everyone usually means a lodge you have not been told about yet.
We do not run a cart. Nothing on this site can be bought without a written quote first.
We are a small company. If that is the wrong shape for your trip, it is better to know now than in Entebbe.

Registrations and memberships

Two of these are registration numbers you can look up. The rest are memberships, and each industry body uses its own terms for the different grades of membership. We are listing the bodies here and nothing more until the exact term for each is confirmed, because a membership described slightly wrongly is worse than one not mentioned.

TICO 50016923	Travel Industry Council of Ontario. A registration, and public.
IATA 96527200	Held by EA Travel and Tours, through which air travel is ticketed.
Industry bodies	Uganda Tourism Board, ESTOA, USTOA, TIAO, TIAC and ATTA.

Want to see how a quote reads?

Four screens of pictures, about two minutes, and an answer before we ask you for anything.

Find My Safari

One company, at both ends of the trip.