Masai Mara National Reserve

The elephant park, and the one that gives you the photograph you already have in your head: big tuskers crossing dust and swamp with Kilimanjaro filling the sky behind them. Amboseli's herds are among the most studied on earth and remarkably relaxed around vehicles. The mountain hides in cloud through the middle of the day, so the light you want is at dawn and again at dusk.

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.