Nyungwe National Park

Nyungwe is one of the oldest montane rainforests in Africa, spread across about 1,019 km² of steep ridges in Rwanda’s south-west. It became a national park in 2004, and it protects the watershed that feeds both the Nile and the Congo. The forest is dense, tall and often wrapped in cloud, and a single road […]

Akagera National Park

Akagera is Rwanda’s only savannah park, a landscape of rolling hills, open grassland, acacia woodland, lakes and papyrus swamp along the Tanzanian border in the east. Founded in 1934 and covering about 1,122 km², it lost much of its wildlife in the 1990s, and its recovery since African Parks took over management with the Rwanda […]

Budongo Forest Reserve

Budongo is Uganda’s largest natural forest, a great block of mahogany and ironwood on the escarpment above Lake Albert, bordering Murchison Falls National Park. It has a long history of chimpanzee research and some of the tallest trees in East Africa. Chimp tracking is based at Kaniyo Pabidi on the road into Murchison, where the […]

Kalinzu Forest Reserve

Kalinzu is a forest reserve on the eastern edge of Queen Elizabeth National Park, on the road between Mbarara and the park. It is managed by the National Forestry Authority and holds a habituated chimpanzee community that has been studied by researchers for many years. It is a practical choice for travellers staying in Queen […]

Mabamba Swamp

Mabamba is a large papyrus wetland on the edge of Lake Victoria, west of Entebbe, and a Ramsar site of international importance. It is one of the most reliable places in Uganda to see the shoebill, a tall, prehistoric-looking bird that stands motionless in the swamp waiting for lungfish. You explore by wooden canoe with […]

Entebbe

Entebbe is a relaxed town on a peninsula in Lake Victoria and home to Uganda’s international airport. It was the colonial capital, and it still has a green, quiet feel, with old gardens, shady streets and the lake at every turn. For many travellers it is the first and last stop of a Uganda safari. […]

Queen Elizabeth National Park

Queen Elizabeth is Uganda’s most varied savannah park, running from the foot of the Rwenzori Mountains to the Ishasha plains on the Congo border. At its centre is the Kazinga Channel, a natural waterway linking Lake George and Lake Edward, where hippos, buffalo and elephants gather at the water’s edge in remarkable numbers. The park […]

Murchison Falls National Park

Murchison Falls is Uganda’s largest national park, and its centrepiece is one of the most powerful sights in Africa: the entire flow of the Victoria Nile forcing through a gorge about seven metres wide, then dropping more than 40 metres in a roar of spray. Below the falls the river widens and slows on its […]

Rwenzori Mountains National Park

The Rwenzori are the legendary Mountains of the Moon, a block of ancient rock thrust up along the Congo border rather than a volcano. Margherita Peak on Mount Stanley reaches 5,109 m, the third highest point in Africa, and the range still holds glaciers on the equator. The park covers about 996 km², was gazetted […]

Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary

Rhinos were wiped out in Uganda by the early 1980s. Ziwa is where they are coming back. The sanctuary covers about 70 km² of bush and swamp between Kampala and Murchison Falls, and the first southern white rhinos were brought here in 2005. The population has since grown steadily, with calves born in the sanctuary. […]

Mount Elgon National Park

Mount Elgon is an extinct volcano on the Kenyan border, and one of the oldest in East Africa. What remains is a vast, broken massif with one of the largest calderas in the world at its heart, a high moorland bowl of hot springs, giant groundsels and silence. On the Ugandan side the park covers […]

Semuliki National Park

Semuliki is where the forests of the Congo basin spill over into Uganda. The park covers about 220 km² of lowland forest in the Semliki valley, below the western flank of the Rwenzori, and was made a national park in 1993. It feels different from the rest of the country: hotter, flatter and more humid, […]