Volcanoes National Park

Volcanoes National Park covers the Rwandan side of the Virunga Massif, a chain of volcanoes shared with Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is only about 160 km², but it is one of the most important places on earth for mountain gorillas. The park began life in 1925 as part of Albert National […]

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 […]

Gishwati-Mukura National Park

Gishwati-Mukura is Rwanda’s newest national park, created by law in 2015 from two separate forest fragments on the Congo-Nile Divide, between the Volcanoes and Lake Kivu. Together they cover only about 34 km², but they represent one of the country’s great restoration projects. Much of Gishwati was cleared for cattle and farming in the 1990s […]

Mgahinga Gorilla National Park

Mgahinga is Uganda’s smallest national park and one of its most beautiful, covering the northern slopes of three extinct Virunga volcanoes: Muhabura, Gahinga and Sabinyo. It adjoins Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda and Virunga in Congo, and together they protect one continuous mountain habitat for gorillas. The park has one habituated gorilla family, which means […]

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 […]

Kidepo Valley National Park

Kidepo Valley lies in the far northeast of Uganda, close to the borders with South Sudan and Kenya. It is remote, dry and beautiful, and it feels like the Africa of old: wide valleys ringed by mountains, a sky that seems larger than anywhere else, and so few visitors that you may not see another […]

Lake Mburo National Park

Lake Mburo is the closest savannah park to Kampala and one of the most relaxed in the country. It has no elephants and few big cats, so it is one of the few parks where you can explore on foot, by bike, on horseback and by boat, getting close to zebra, eland, impala and topi […]

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 […]

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, […]