Kidepo Valley National Park

Compact, accessible and the only Ugandan park with impala and large zebra herds, sitting conveniently on the road between Kampala and the southwest. Because there are no elephant or lion across much of it, Mburo permits what most parks cannot: walking safaris, horseback rides and night drives. An excellent first or last stop on a longer itinerary.

The world's largest intact volcanic caldera — 260 square kilometres of crater floor 600m below the rim, holding roughly 25,000 large animals that mostly never leave. It is the surest place in East Africa to see black rhino, and one of very few where lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard and rhino occupy a single enclosed bowl. Descending through cloud forest at dawn into that natural amphitheatre is the moment people remember.

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.