Kibale Forest National Park

One of Africa's oldest montane rainforests, old enough to have survived the last ice age, which is why it holds thirteen primate species and around 300 birds including numerous Albertine Rift endemics. The canopy walkway runs 70m above the forest floor on a suspension bridge — the only one of its kind in East Africa. Chimpanzee tracking and enormous troops of Angolan colobus are the other draws.

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.