Best National Parks & Reserves of Uganda

Queen Elizabeth

Phoenix Rising
Devastated by war and poaching in the 1980s, Queen Elizabeth NP (QE if you’re feeling familiar) is frequently characterised as a poor Ugandan relation to the great savannah reserves of Tanzania and Kenya. This widespread perception is surely due for revision.
An immaculate lakeshore location below the Ruwenzori Mountains and a lush cover of green grassland dotted with tall cactus-like candelabra trees and sunken crater lakes make this perhaps the most conventionally scenic of all East African savannah reserves. Furthermore, the game is now well on the way to recovery: QE today offers reliably good — and sometimes exceptional — wildlife viewing, with the usual savannah suspects boosted by several less common species.

Substantial elephant and buffalo herds are almost certain around Mweya Peninsula (the park’s main tourist centre) and lion are regularly seen. Mweya is also acquiring an enviable reputation for leopard sightings and offers a high probability of encountering Giant forest hog — the only park in East Africa where they’re regularly seen by day. Chimp tracking can be undertaken in Chambura Gorge, while launch trips on the Kazinga Channel are good for antelope, hippos, crocs and a selection of the 565 bird species recorded within the park’s relatively small area.

QE is a park of three distinct sectors. Mweya, overlooking Lake Alfred and on a clear day offering great views to the Ruwenzori peaks, hosts a large swanky hotel, as well as a cheaper hostel, resthouse and campsite. In the Maramagambo Forest — a rich site for birds and primates — an intimate luxury tented camp is perched on the edge of one of the park’s myriad crater lakes. Basic, affordable huts are available in the remote Ishasha sector, renowned for its tree-climbing lions and wilderness atmosphere.

Ruwenzori Mountains

Lunar Peaks
In 1888 the explorer Henry Stanley obtained a rare unclouded view of the peaks forming the 120km-long Ruwenzori Range, thereby (he announced) resolving a question that had troubled geographers for centuries: the location of the snow-capped Lunae Montes — Mountains of the Moon — cited in Ptolemy’s Geography as the source of the Nile. The connection made by Stanley is actually somewhat debatable, since Ptolemy’s knowledge of the African interior was based flimsily on third-hand information sourced from Indian Ocean traders more likely to have been familiar with Mounts Kilimanjaro or Kenya.

Nevertheless, the association between the Ruwenzoris and the Mountains of the Moon has proved enduring — and unintentionally apt. The upper moorland of this vast range, all multihued heath studded by desolate stands of giant lobelia and groundsel, does indeed possess a disarmingly otherworldly quality: “a world of fantasy where nothing is real but only a wild and lovely flight of imagination,” wrote the explorer Eric Shipton, who ascended the peaks in 1932. The Ruwenzoris are also, when the cloud lifts to reveal the lunar glacial peaks and deep tarns sunk at their base, perhaps the most scenically imposing and ethereal of all East African montane landscapes — and the most challenging for dedicated hikers.

Closed since 1997 due to cross-border rebel activity, Ruwenzori NP re-opened in 2002 and is normally explored over 3–7 days along variations of the so-called loop trail, which skirts the base of the glacial peaks. Notoriously boggy at the best of times, these trails are best avoided during the rains, except perhaps by diehard mud-wrestlers (June–August is the perfect time to hike). Only experienced and properly equipped technical climbers should attempt the peaks, three of which rise to above 5000m.