Sipi Falls

Where the White Nile leaves Lake Victoria and begins a 6,650km journey to the Mediterranean. Jinja has grown into East Africa's adventure capital: grade five white-water rafting through warm, big-volume rapids, kayaking, riverboarding, quad biking through the villages and a 44m bungee over the river. Calmer options include sunset boat trips to the source itself and the Nile Brewery tour.

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.