Entebbe & Lake Victoria

One of Africa's Great Lakes, filling a Rift Valley trough between Rwanda and the DRC, with no crocodile or hippo and safe, swimmable water. The lakeside towns of Gisenyi, Kibuye and Rusizi are strung together by the Congo Nile Trail, which runs 227km along the shore and can be walked, ridden or dipped into for a day. Island-hopping boat trips leave from Kibuye.

Uganda's largest and oldest park, split by the Victoria Nile as it forces itself through a seven-metre gorge and detonates into the Rift Valley below. Game drives on the northern bank turn up elephant, giraffe, buffalo and lion across open savanna; the afternoon launch cruise runs to the foot of the falls past hippo pods and basking crocodile. The Delta stretch is one of the last reliable places on earth to see the shoebill.

Uganda's most popular savanna reserve sits beneath the Rwenzori range between lakes George and Edward. The Kazinga Channel cruise delivers density you rarely see anywhere else — elephant, buffalo and hippo along a single stretch of shoreline. In the southern Ishasha sector the lions climb fig trees and drape themselves across the branches through the heat of the day, a behaviour recorded in only a handful of places worldwide.