Queen Elizabeth National Park — Uganda’s Savannah Safari Destination
Queen Elizabeth National Park covers 1,978 square kilometres of western Uganda’s Albertine Rift landscape — savannah grassland, wetlands, forest, and the Kazinga Channel connecting Lakes Edward and George in one of Uganda’s most ecologically diverse protected areas. For visitors on a Uganda gorilla trekking itinerary who want to add a savannah wildlife experience to the forest encounters at Bwindi and Kibale, Queen Elizabeth is the natural connection — approximately two to three hours’ drive from both Bwindi (via the scenic road through Ishasha) and Kibale.
The Kazinga Channel Boat Cruise
The Kazinga Channel boat cruise is the experience that most consistently distinguishes a Queen Elizabeth visit from a standard savannah game drive. The channel connects Lake Edward in the west to Lake George in the east, and its banks support one of the highest concentrations of hippos in East Africa — several thousand animals whose territorial management of the channel banks produces the visual abundance of hippo-watching from water level that no land-based game drive can replicate. Crocodiles line the channel margins in numbers, and the waterbird community includes African fish eagle, pink-backed pelican, goliath heron, open-billed stork, and the occasional shoebill in the papyrus margins at the Lake George end of the channel.
The two-hour cruise runs twice daily from Mweya Peninsula — morning and afternoon. The afternoon cruise typically produces better wildlife activity as animals return to the channel banks during the cooling hours. The morning cruise catches the hippos in their overnight territorial positions before the day’s heat drives them back into the water. Both sessions are productive; the choice depends on itinerary sequencing.
The Tree-Climbing Lions of Ishasha
The Ishasha sector in the southern part of Queen Elizabeth National Park is the only place in Africa where lions are observed regularly climbing and resting in trees — a behaviour documented in this specific population and in a small population in Tanzania’s Lake Manyara National Park, and nowhere else. The Ishasha lions use the large fig trees on the southern plain as resting platforms, lying across major branches in groups of two to five, apparently using the elevated position to avoid ground-level insects and take advantage of higher breezes. The behaviour is not universally observed on every Ishasha game drive, but sightings are frequent enough that operators specifically include Ishasha as a stopping point on the drive north from Bwindi to the main Queen Elizabeth area.
Photographing tree-climbing lions against the backdrop of the Ishasha plain and the Virunga volcanoes visible on the horizon to the south produces one of the most distinctive wildlife images available in Uganda. The combination of unusual animal behaviour and dramatic geographic context makes the Ishasha stop one of the most memorable of any Uganda safari.
The Savannah Game Drive Circuit
Queen Elizabeth’s northern sector — the main game drive area around Mweya Peninsula and the Kasenyi plains — supports elephant herds, Cape buffalo in large numbers, Uganda kob in their tens of thousands across the grassland plains, warthog, waterbuck, and the full suite of Albertine Rift savannah species. Predator sightings include lion, leopard, and hyena; the Mweya circuit is one of the more productive areas in Uganda for lion in open ground, which provides an interesting comparison point for the tree-climbing Ishasha lions’ behaviour.
The Kyambura Gorge — a forest gorge cutting down into the Rift Valley escarpment in the eastern part of the park — provides a walking experience in a forest environment within the savannah context of Queen Elizabeth. The gorge contains a small chimpanzee community (sometimes encountered on the gorge walk) and the dramatic gorge landscape itself, which involves a descent on a maintained path and a gorge-floor walk through riverine forest.
Where to Stay in Queen Elizabeth
The lodges near Mweya Peninsula and on its elevated position above the channel junction provide the best access to both the boat cruise and the northern game drive circuit. Mweya Safari Lodge on the peninsula itself has direct channel views and boat access; the positioning produces the most immediate relationship with the channel wildlife of any accommodation in the park. For the highest accommodation quality in Queen Elizabeth, The Elephant Plains Lodge and Kyambura Gorge Lodge on the park’s eastern boundary provide luxury tented accommodation with the Kyambura forest as immediate backdrop.
