Queen Elizabeth National Park

Overview

Queen Elizabeth spreads across roughly 1,978 square kilometres between Lake Edward and Lake George, in the shadow of the Rwenzori mountains, and takes in savannah, crater lakes, papyrus swamp, forest and the Kazinga Channel that links the two lakes. The channel is the park's centrepiece: a two-hour boat cruise along it passes what is often described as the densest concentration of hippo in the world, plus buffalo, elephant coming down to drink, and an extraordinary density of waterbirds. In the far south, the Ishasha sector is famous for lions that lie along the branches of fig trees - a behaviour seen in only a handful of places on earth. Kyambura Gorge, a sunken forest slicing through the savannah, holds a small habituated chimpanzee group. The park sits on the equator, has over 600 recorded bird species, and its Katwe crater lakes have been worked for salt by hand for six hundred years.