43 parks, reserves and islands across 4 countries — what each one is known for, when to come, and the safaris that go there.
43 destinations
The Jewel of EAST AFRICA!
First safaris, big cats, the migration, photography
The Mara is the northern end of the Serengeti ecosystem, and the single best place in Africa to watch big cats hunt. Between July and October around a million and a half wildebeest and zebra cross the Mara River into it. The rest of the year it is quieter, cheaper, and still holds the highest density of lion, cheetah and leopard in Kenya.
Elephants, photography, short trips from Nairobi
Amboseli is where you photograph elephants with Kilimanjaro behind them. The swamps fed by meltwater off the mountain hold big herds year round, the plains are open and dusty so nothing hides, and it is close enough to Nairobi to be worth three days on its own.
Second safaris, rare species, travellers avoiding crowds
Samburu is the dry north, and the wildlife is different for it. Grevy's zebra, reticulated giraffe, Beisa oryx, gerenuk and Somali ostrich live here and almost nowhere else in Kenya — guides call them the Samburu Special Five. The Ewaso Nyiro river keeps it all alive and draws elephant down to drink all afternoon.
Families, birders, anybody tired of sitting in a vehicle
Naivasha is the freshwater lake in the floor of the Rift Valley, ninety minutes from Nairobi. You get out of the vehicle here: a boat among the hippos, a walk or a cycle on Crescent Island among giraffe and zebra with no predators to worry about. It is the day that breaks up a driving safari.
Landscape, black rhino, walking, quieter safaris
Tsavo West is the handsome half of Tsavo — hills, lava flows and green scrub instead of flat red plain. Mzima Springs pushes fifty million gallons of clear water out of the ground every day, and an underwater chamber lets you watch hippo and crocodile from below the surface. The rhino sanctuary here is one of the few places in Kenya to see black rhino.
Safari and beach trips, elephants, wide-open country
Tsavo East is vast, flat and red — the elephants here are stained by the dust and look it. It is the park you cross on the way between Nairobi and the coast, which makes it the natural way to put a safari in front of a week at Diani or Watamu.
Layovers, first and last days, families, short time
The only national park in the world inside a capital city. Lion, rhino, giraffe and buffalo on open plains with Nairobi's skyline on the horizon — and you can be back at the airport in forty minutes. It is the half-day that rescues an arrival or departure date nobody knew what to do with.
Rhino, conservation-minded travellers, walking safaris
Ol Pejeta is a working conservancy on the Laikipia plateau with Mount Kenya behind it. It holds the largest black rhino population in East Africa, the last two northern white rhino on earth, and a chimpanzee sanctuary. Because it is private land, you can track rhino on foot and drive at night — neither of which a national park allows.
Rhino, short add-ons, birders
A shallow soda lake ringed by acacia and yellow-barked fever trees, fenced right around — which is why it works as a rhino sanctuary. Both black and white rhino are here in numbers, along with Rothschild's giraffe and the lions that have taken to climbing trees. It is ninety minutes from Naivasha and slots into almost any Kenya route.
Second safaris, rare forest species, something different
The Aberdares are cold, wet mountain forest and moorland — nothing like the plains below. The lodges here are built over waterholes and you watch from a balcony instead of a vehicle, often after dark, which is when the elephant, buffalo, giant forest hog and the occasional bongo come in.
Active travellers, families with teenagers, cyclists
Hell's Gate has no big predators to speak of, which is the whole point: you cycle and walk through it. Red cliffs, steam vents and a gorge you climb down into on foot, with zebra and giraffe watching from the track. It is an hour from Naivasha and the most active day on a Kenyan itinerary.
Birders, geology, travellers who have already done the big parks
Bogoria is the one with the geysers. Jets of boiling water and steam come straight out of the lake shore, and the alkaline water behind them often carries the biggest flamingo flocks left in the Rift Valley. It is a detour off the Nakuru road and a strange, memorable hour.
Repeat visitors, solitude, rhino
Meru is where Elsa the lioness of Born Free was raised and released. It is well watered, green and almost empty of other vehicles — thirteen rivers, doum palms, and a rhino sanctuary inside the park. For a traveller who has done the Mara and wants wilderness without a crowd, this is the answer.
Trekkers, acclimatising before Kilimanjaro, mountain birders
Africa's second highest mountain, and the one you can climb without technical gear. Point Lenana at 4,985m is a long trek rather than a climb, through bamboo, giant groundsel and glacial tarns. The forest on the lower slopes holds elephant and buffalo, so the first day is a game walk in all but name.
Hikers, day trips from Nairobi, active itineraries
A dormant volcano two hours from Nairobi with a path right around its crater rim. The climb takes about four hours return and the view down into the forested crater floor, and out across Lake Naivasha, is the reward. It is the best half-day of exercise in the Rift Valley.
Land of a THOUSAND HILLS!
Gorillas on a short trip, travellers with limited time
Five volcanoes on the Rwandan side of the Virungas, and the forest Dian Fossey worked in for eighteen years. Gorilla trekking here is shorter and better organised than almost anywhere — Kigali is two and a half hours away by road, which means you can land, trek and fly home inside three days.
Primates, birders, hikers
One of the oldest rainforests in Africa, and a canopy walkway a hundred metres above the forest floor to see it from. Thirteen primate species live here, including chimpanzees and troops of several hundred Angolan colobus — the largest arboreal primate groups anywhere.
Pairing savannah with gorillas, conservation stories, boat safaris
Rwanda's only savannah park, on the Tanzanian border, and the story of its recovery is the reason to go. Lion were reintroduced in 2015 and rhino in 2017, so Akagera is a Big Five park again after decades without. Lakes and papyrus swamps make up a third of it, so boat trips sit alongside game drives.
Every visitor to Rwanda, before anything else
The memorial is where more than 250,000 victims of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi are buried. It is not a sight to tick off; it is a couple of hours that will change how you understand everything else you see in Rwanda. Most visitors go on their first morning, before heading for the gorillas.
Arrival and departure days, food, city walking
Kigali surprises people: clean, green, laid out over a dozen hills and genuinely safe to walk at night. It is where every Rwandan trip starts and ends, and it is worth a day rather than a transfer — markets, a serious coffee scene, art co-operatives and some of the best restaurants in the region.
Travellers who have done Volcanoes and Nyungwe, birders
Rwanda's newest national park, gazetted in 2019 out of two remnant forests that were nearly logged out. It is a restoration project you can walk through: chimpanzees, golden monkeys and over two hundred bird species in forest that is being actively stitched back together.
Land of Wildlife, Adventure and Scenic Beauty!
The migration, big cats, photographers, second safaris
Fourteen thousand square kilometres of plains, and the stage for the whole wildebeest migration — which is not an event but a year-round circuit the herds never stop walking. Where they are depends on the month, so the Serengeti rewards planning more than any other park in East Africa.
First safaris, short trips, the Big Five, black rhino
A collapsed volcano twenty kilometres across with twenty-five thousand animals living on the floor of it, walled in by a six-hundred-metre rim. It is the one place in East Africa where seeing all of the Big Five in a single morning is an ordinary outcome rather than a lucky one.
Elephants, birders, the first stop on a northern circuit
Tarangire has the baobabs and the elephants. In the dry season the river is the only water for miles and the herds concentrate on it — three and four hundred elephant in a day is not unusual, which beats anything the Serengeti offers. It is two hours from Arusha and usually the first stop on a northern circuit.
Half-day stops, birders, breaking up a long drive
A narrow strip of forest, lake and floodplain under the Rift Valley escarpment, famous for lions that sleep in the acacia branches. It is small enough to see in half a day and sits directly on the road between Arusha and the Ngorongoro Crater, so it costs an itinerary almost nothing.
Honeymoons, the end of a safari, families, divers
Where an East African safari ends. Zanzibar is an hour's flight from Arusha: white sand, warm water, and Stone Town, a thousand-year-old trading port of carved doors and narrow lanes that is a UNESCO World Heritage site in its own right. Three nights here changes what the whole trip felt like.
Trekkers, a serious physical challenge, pairing with a safari
The highest mountain in Africa at 5,895m, and the highest in the world you can walk up — no ropes, no technical climbing, just altitude and a lot of days. The route matters more than anything else: the longer ones acclimatise you properly and summit success rises with every extra night on the mountain.
Primates, repeat visitors, anybody who grew up on Goodall
The smallest national park in Tanzania, a strip of forest on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, and the place Jane Goodall spent fifty years studying chimpanzees. The troops here are habituated to a degree found almost nowhere else, which means close, unhurried time with them on foot.
Experienced safari travellers, genuine remoteness
One of the least visited national parks in Africa, in the far west of Tanzania. In the dry season the Katisunga floodplain holds buffalo herds of a thousand and more, and hippo pile into the shrinking pools in numbers that have to be seen. You will likely be the only vehicle in the park.
Repeat visitors, walking and boat safaris, wild dog
The largest national park in Africa, and almost nobody goes. Nyerere — the old Selous — is boat safaris on the Rufiji river, walking safaris with an armed ranger, and wild dog, which is the species serious safari-goers travel for. It is the southern circuit, reached by a short flight from Dar es Salaam.
Second safaris, big lion prides, antelope species
Tanzania's largest park after Nyerere, where the East African and southern African species overlap — so you get greater and lesser kudu, sable and roan in the same place as the usual plains game. Lion prides here run large, and the Great Ruaha river draws everything in during the dry months.
The Pearl of AFRICA!
Gorilla trekking, once-in-a-lifetime trips, fit walkers
Bwindi holds roughly half the mountain gorillas left on earth. You walk into thick, steep, ancient forest with a ranger and a tracker, sometimes for an hour and sometimes for six, and then spend one hour with a habituated family at a few metres' distance. People who have done every safari there is still describe it as the best hour of their lives.
First-time Uganda, families, combining with chimpanzees
The Nile squeezes through a gap seven metres wide and drops forty-three metres, and the noise of it is the reason people come. Around the falls is Uganda's largest park: a boat trip to the base of them past hippo and crocodile, then game drives on the northern bank for lion, elephant and Rothschild's giraffe.
Primates, birders, pairing with gorilla trekking
The best chimpanzee tracking in East Africa, in a forest holding thirteen primate species. Around 1,500 chimps live here and the habituated communities are relaxed enough that you watch them feed, groom and argue overhead rather than catching a glimpse and losing them.
Variety in a short time, boat safaris, birders
Uganda's most visited park, and the one with the most variety: a boat cruise on the Kazinga Channel past hundreds of hippo, the Kasenyi plains for lion, and the Ishasha sector in the south where the lions lie in the fig trees. The Rwenzori mountains stand behind it on a clear day.
Lion, photographers, early risers
The Kasenyi plains are the open grassland sector of Queen Elizabeth National Park, and the reason you set an alarm for 5.30am. The park's lions hunt Uganda kob here, and a dawn drive across the plains is the most reliable big-cat hour in the country.
Cultural travellers, visitors trekking gorillas in Bwindi
A Batwa community on the edge of Bwindi, where the forest people evicted when the park was gazetted in 1991 show how they lived inside it — tracking, hunting, fire, medicine, and the tree houses they slept in. It is a short visit and the most direct account you will get of what conservation cost the people who were already there.
Birders, breaking the drive north, primate enthusiasts
The largest mahogany forest in East Africa, on the road into Murchison Falls, with a chimpanzee community that has been tracked since the nineties. Stopping here turns the drive north into a morning in the forest rather than six hours in a vehicle.
Birders, canoeing, breaking up a long transfer
A small reserve on the Katonga river, between Kampala and the western parks, where the wildlife viewing is done from a canoe or on foot rather than from a vehicle. Sitatunga — the swamp antelope with splayed hooves — are the draw, and they are difficult to see anywhere else.
Repeat visitors, wilderness, photographers
Kidepo sits in the far north-east against the South Sudan border, and most people who rank Uganda's parks put it first. The Narus valley holds buffalo herds in the thousands, there are cheetah and ostrich found nowhere else in the country, and you will share it with almost nobody.
Breaking the drive to Bwindi, walking, families
The only Ugandan park with zebra, and small enough that you can walk in it, take a boat on the lake and do a game drive in the same day. Three hours from Kampala, it is the stop that turns a long drive to the gorillas into a proper first night.
Golden monkeys, volcano climbs, gorillas without the crowds
The smallest park in Uganda, where three volcanoes meet the Rwandan and Congolese borders. It has a gorilla family of its own and, more unusually, golden monkeys — and the Batwa trail here is led by the forest people who lived in it before it was a park.
Serious birders, repeat Uganda visitors
Uganda's oldest wildlife reserve, in the Albertine Rift where East African savannah meets Congolese rainforest — so the bird list reads like two countries at once. The Sempaya hot springs boil hard enough to cook an egg, and the Batwa still live on the reserve edge.
Nothing here for that country yet.
Most first safaris are Kenya or Tanzania. Most second ones are gorillas. Tell us roughly when you can travel and how long you have, and we will say honestly what fits — and what does not.