Safari in Queen Elizabeth National Park
Queen Elizabeth National Park is one of the most popular national parks in Uganda associated with different types of wildlife, birds and primates species and other interesting tourist attractions like crater Lakes and humid forests which creates favorable environment in the park. It is located in southwestern region of Uganda and you can access it via different routes.
Route one is from Kampala on tarmac road via Masaka – Mbarara highway with lunch at Agip Motel in Mbarara town and Bushenyi leads to the centre of the park and using this route it covers a distance of approximately 420km while you can access the park from the Fort Portal and it covers a distance of approximately 410km, so it is your choice to choose what route to use because each route has different benefits like for the Fort Portal route you have the opportunity of enjoying short detours to Rwenzori mountains and Kibale Forest National Park for chimpanzee trekking and for the southern route you can first visit to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park for gorilla trekking safari and then enter the Queen Elizabeth National Park via the Ishasha Southern sector famously known for the rare African tree climbing lions and other wildlife like topi, oribi, elephants, buffaloes among others.
While in Queen Elizabeth National Park I discovered and experienced many activities which take place in the park like birding, Chimpanzee trekking, game drives, nature walks, cave, launch trips, cultural heritage and nature trail and wildlife research tour.
Queen Elizabeth National Park is an important birding area comprising of over 600 species of birds as it is due to its acquirement of a variety of habitats that range from Savannah grasslands to wetlands which attracts in more and different species. Majority of birds found in this area are regarded as famous birds of east Africa and are must see for bird watchers coming to Uganda. We carried out our birding tour walk in Maramagambo forest and this forest cover the biggest part of queen Elizabeth National Park along the Kichwamba escarpment.
Although we did not exhaust the large number of bird species found in this park we managed to spot interesting species like little grebe, Red-chested cuckoo, Black cuckoo, African fin foot, Yellow bill, Blue-breasted kingfisher, Barbets, Red-throated wryneck, black bee –eater, Blue-throated roller, Green crombec, Dark –capped warbler and many others and this indicated to me that Uganda is the pearl of Africa for sure due to the interesting different bird species in the park. On top of that I have a feeling that the left un spotted bird species in the park are more interesting as the spotted ones and it encourages me to put in more efforts such that I can go back and discover more and more species and have more photos for my galley on birding.
Queen Elizabeth National Park is also equipped with chimpanzee although most of the big numbers are found in Kibale Forest National Park. We managed to sight some chimpanzees in the Savannah forests of Queen Elizabeth National Park and they were trying to mean their business. We were also able to sight other species like bats, monkeys, insects and others.
Early in the morning we prepared for our game drive through Kasenyi, Kazinga plains and the ishasha sector and were able to sight different species like buffaloes, antelopes, elephants, warthogs and baboons with the additional sighting of the tree climbing lions at large. This safari left me with the repeating memories of Queen Elizabeth National Park.