Offering some of the most stunning scenery of any protected area in Uganda Kidepo Valley National Park is hidden away in this lost valley in the extreme northeast of Uganda. The rolling, short-grass savannah of the 1442-sq-km national park is ringed by mountains and cut by rocky ridges. Kidepo is most notable for harbouring a number of animals found nowhere else in Uganda, including cheetahs, bat-eared foxes, aardwolves, caracal, greater and lesser kudus.
There are also large concentrations of elephants, zebras, buffaloes, bushbuck, giraffes, lions, jackals, leopard, hyenas and Nile crocodiles. Amazingly, most of these animals, including even the occasional lion, are content to graze and lounge right near the park’s accommodation, so you can see a whole lot without going very far: it’s a safari from a lounge chair (or in Apoka Safari Lodge’s case – from a bathtub!).
The bird checklist is fast approaching 500 species (second among the national parks only to the larger Queen Elizabeth National Park) and there are many ‘Kidepo specials’: birds such as ostrich, kori bustard, pygmy falcon, secretary bird, Karamoja apalis and Abyssinian ground hornbill that are found in no other Ugandan national park.
