Where would you like to go, and what would you like to do?

Murchison Falls National Park is Uganda’s oldest and largest conservation area, covering an area of 3,840 Km² and home to over 451 bird species, including the highly sought after and rare shoebill stork and a total of 76 different mammal species, including the highest concentration of Rothschild’s giraffe in the world. Other game sightings regularly include lion, elephant, hippo, leopard, buffalo, hyena, warthog and various antelope. Arguably the highlight of this trip is the mighty River Nile, which bisects the park and is forced through an 8m² wide cleft in the rock at Murchison Falls, plunging into the Devil’s Cauldron below.

Home to 19 white rhinos, as well as 20 other species of wildlife. The rhinos roam freely on 7,000 acres of land, although they are closely monitored 24 hours a day to protect them from poaching.

At 260 Km2, Lake Mburo National Park is the smallest of Uganda’s savannah parks, however its myriad of habitats supports a surprising diversity of plants and animals. Underlain by ancient pre-Cambrian metamorphic rocks, dating back more than 500 million years, it is the only national park in Uganda to contain an entire lake. Lake Mburo lies at the centre of the park, which together with 14 other lakes, forms part of a wetland system – in fact almost a fifth of the park’s area consists of wetlands. The park is home to over 300 different bird species as well as zebra, leopard, hippo, buffalo, hyena and numerous antelope species including impala, eland, oribi, reedbuck, topi and Defassa waterbuck. In addition a small population of Rothschild’s giraffe was introduced from Murchison Falls in 2015.

Queen Elizabeth National Park is deservedly Uganda’s most popular tourist destination, offering breathtaking scenery and an abundance of wildlife. The park borders Lakes Edward and George, which are connected by the Kazinga Channel, and is set against the back drop of the fabled Mountains of the Moon: the Rwenzori Mountains. The park is continuous with Parc National des Virunga in Congo, and as such forms one of the largest protected areas in Eastern Africa. The park is home to more than 600 bird and 95 mammal species, including lion, elephant, hippo, leopard, buffalo, hyena, warthog and various antelope.

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park lies in South-Western Uganda, on the edge of the Rift Valley and alongside the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Classed as a UNESCO world heritage site due to its ecological importance, it is one of Uganda’s oldest rainforests, dating back over 25,000 years. The park provides a rich and diverse habitat for almost 350 bird species and 120 different species of mammal - most famously an estimated 340 critically endangered mountain gorillas: roughly half of the world’s population.

The region also provides shelter for several other primate species, such as baboon, black and white colobus and chimpanzee, as well as elephant and antelope.

Kidepo is Uganda’s most isolated national park, nestled in the rugged, semi arid valleys between the Sudanese and Kenyan borders in the north-eastern Karamoja region of Uganda. Transected by the Narus and Kidepo Rivers, the park hosts a profusion of big game, with over 80 species of mammal, including lion, leopard, elephant, giraffe, zebra and various antelope species. A staggering 28 species of mammal found in Kidepo cannot be found in any other national park in Uganda: cheetah, striped hyena, aardwolf, caracal and kudu to name but a few. With a total of more than 475 different bird species, Kidepo is also considered outstanding for birds of prey and 58 different species have been recorded here.

Your trip to Kidepo will take in the contrasts of the grassland plains of the Narus Valley, where most of the park’s wildlife congregates due to the permanent water supply, and the hot and arid area of the extreme north, beside the South Sudanese border. You will cross over the Kidepo River and because it is dry for the majority of the year, you should be able to take a stroll along its 50m wide bed of white sands, surrounded on either side by Borassus palms. 11km north of here you will reach the Kanangarok hot springs - a fabulous place to look out for ostrich and to admire the mountains beyond the frontier.