Kidepo National Park Uganda’s best park for Uganda tours, wildlife tours

 

This follows the listing of Kidepo National Park in north eastern Uganda as one of the 10 best parks in Africa by CNN Travel, a US television of global repute.

According to the publication, Africa is regarded as a destination for safari, but Kidepo Valley National Park, covering 1,442 square kilometers is one of the top 10 parks where travelers can find the most outstanding trips.

Kidepo was rated highly by the CNN Travel for its spectacular landscapes and great buffalo herds. “With sprawling savannah and soaring mountains, Kidepo National Park might be the most picturesque park in Africa,” stated the publication.

This comes hot on the heels of another landmark rating of Uganda as one of the top 10 tourism destination globally in the year 2013 by the National Geographic. The National Geographic is an international travel channel affiliated to the National Geographic Society. Also, the Lonely Planet, a travel magazine, rated Uganda as the best travel destination for 2012.

Lillian Nsubuga, the public relations manager of the Uganda Wildlife Authority, told New Vision that the accolades lavished on Uganda shows the richness of the country.

A herd of buffaloes in Kidepo Valley national park

But she pointed out inadequate infrastructure, particularly roads that are undermining exploitation of places like Kidepo. “Foreigners who have been to Kidepo rate it highly because it is one place that gives you value for money,” she said, adding that poaching by the Toposa, a tribe from South Sudan, remains a challenge.

Sharing borders with South Sudan and Kenya, Kidepo is Uganda’s most beautiful, remote and least-explored park, according to the publication. Regarded as a hard-to-reach place in northern Uganda because of the poor state of the roads, Kidepo gets fewer visitors than any other grassland park in Uganda.

“Those who take the trouble to get here are rewarded with phenomenal wildlife sightings and a level of exclusivity that can rarely be got at any cost in neighboring countries,” stated CNN Travel.

“Kidepo Valley Park landscapes are never ending and simply take your breath away – and a stillness only broken by the cry from the wild,” stated a source who has visited. “The sounds of the winds sweeping through the valley, you are amazed that such a place as Kidepo Valley Park even exists.”

He added: “There is an abundance of wildlife, stunning scenery and an absence of people with no caravans of vehicles meandering down the game tracks.” Apart from huge herds of buffaloes, Kidepo is also endowed with lions, elephants, giraffes, leopards, cheetahs, wild dogs, ostriches, stripped hyenas and hunting dogs.

Others are antelopes such as eland, bush buck, bush duskier, defassa water buck, bohor reed buck, Jackson’s hartebeest and oribi. In addition to the ostriches, it also has plenty of bird life.