When a Sacred Earth proposal reaches a traveller, the guide's name is printed on it. Not “your driver-guide”, not “our ground team” — a name. If that sounds to you like the obvious way to run things, we should talk.
The work
Our journeys are bespoke, built by trip designers in Uganda around the people who know the ground. The four passages ask specific things of a guide: the Mubwindi Swamp trail at a proper dawn, the Bigo bya Mugenyi earthworks on the Katonga, the caldera moorland on Mount Elgon, Kidepo at the end of the road. Nobody guides all of that equally well, and we do not expect you to. We would rather build a journey around three people who each know one ground deeply than one person who can drive the whole loop.
Birds are a strength here. Fox's Weaver went unrecorded for over twenty years before being refound in a flooded Teso wetland — by people who kept looking. The lists on our birding pages stop where our own record stops; the full lists are guides' work, and they travel with the proposal.
What we look for
- Place-first knowledge. Years on one ground count for more with us than a full-circuit CV.
- Birds. Not a requirement, but many of our travellers come for them. If you can hold a dawn chorus apart by ear, say so.
- Consent as habit. Photography asked for, and no accepted as an answer. Custodians' rules kept at shrines and sacred sites. Our partner standards put all of this in writing, and every guide we work with holds to them.
What to send
Two things: where you guide, and how long you have guided there. No forms and nothing to pay — the conversation starts with the ground you know.
Write to [email protected] with where you guide and how long you have guided there. The reply comes from Kampala.