Uganda: Lake Mburo National Park

🦓 Lake Mburo — Uganda’s Smallest Park, But Don’t Let That Put You Off

Lake Mburo National Park holds the distinction of being Uganda’s smallest national park, covering just 370 square kilometres and established officially in 1983. Despite its modest size, it punches well above its weight. Sitting only a few hours’ drive from both Kampala and Entebbe — Uganda’s busy capital and its main international gateway respectively — it has long been a favourite stopping point for travellers at either the start or the tail end of a Ugandan tour. For us, it was our final stop in the country, a gentle and rather lovely way to round things off.

One of the finest ways to get properly acquainted with the park is to ditch the vehicle and do a walking safari. Now, before you go imagining yourself as a mid-budget action hero, it’s worth noting why this is perfectly safe here. Lake Mburo has no elephants, no rhinos, and no big cats. The lions were wiped out decades ago, and the park simply never had the others in any great number. So you can wander around quite happily for a few hours with nothing more threatening nearby than a rather grumpy warthog — more on those later. You’re accompanied throughout by an armed Park Ranger, which adds a pleasant sense of official authority to proceedings.

We were up early, as you have to be with these things. The rains that had been pestering us for the previous few days had done a proper job of cranking up the humidity, and the coolness of that particular morning had produced a dense, thick fog that settled across the whole landscape like a damp blanket. We were genuinely not sure how much we were going to see. Still, we pressed on. When we reached the park gates, our guide — a park ranger — jumped into the car with us and off we went into the murk.

We had barely gone any distance at all when the first zebras of our entire Africa trip appeared out of the gloom. We were absolutely thrilled — genuinely buzzing. Our guide Mugabe and the Ranger, bless them, seemed considerably less moved by the spectacle. We later found out why: Lake Mburo is home to over 20,000 zebras. Plains zebras, to be precise — the most common of the three zebra species — and they’ve been resident in the park since long before it received its national park status. So for those two, it was very much a case of “oh, zebras, right, yes, shall we carry on then.”

🦒 Giraffes, Impalas, and a Very Alarming Warthog Hole

Much to our considerable relief, the fog had begun to lift a bit as we continued, and out of the mist emerged a sight that frankly stopped us in our tracks — a good number of giraffes materialising like enormous, improbable apparitions. These were Rothschild giraffes, one of the most endangered giraffe subspecies in the world, recognisable by the absence of markings below the knee, giving the impression they’re wearing white stockings. A small founding group had been translocated to Lake Mburo from the Murchison Falls herd — up in the northwest of Uganda — and since then they’d been doing very nicely indeed, with their numbers growing at an encouraging rate.

The truly wonderful thing about this part of the tour was that we were on foot. As we mentioned, no predators means you can actually walk among the giraffes, which is a rather remarkable experience. They are extraordinarily gentle creatures, though as the Ranger sensibly reminded us, they’re perfectly capable of delivering a kick that would rearrange your entire afternoon — so close admiration is the order of the day, not hands-on interaction. In this particular herd we counted around 20 individuals, including several very endearing calves who looked at us with enormous dark eyes and apparently zero concern.

We continued on, following in a line behind the Ranger as you do, and gradually the mist thinned enough to reveal other animals picking their way through the landscape — impala, those elegantly built antelopes that seem to exist purely to look graceful, and topi, with their distinctive dark patches and rather serious expressions. And beyond them, more zebras. Always more zebras. Despite all the recent rainfall, the ground was surprisingly dry underfoot, and the waterholes we came across looked decidedly parched — something of a paradox, but Uganda’s savannah ecosystem is nothing if not unpredictable.

At one point we came across a substantial burrow that had been excavated by a warthog. The Ranger, who clearly enjoyed his role as our educator-in-chief, paused to explain two very good reasons why one should never stand directly in front of a warthog hole. The first: warthogs, sensibly enough given the nature of their tusks, reverse into their burrows. So when they come charging out, which they do at considerable speed, it is a full frontal assault with no warning whatsoever. Not ideal. The second reason — and this was the one that really got our attention — was that spitting cobras are rather fond of lurking in the entrances of warthog holes. Spitting cobras, for those unfamiliar, are exactly what they sound like, and their venom is aimed with considerable accuracy at the eyes. So really, all things considered, the advice was: step away from the hole.

After a couple of hours of thoroughly enjoyable, if slightly trepidation-inducing, gentle walking, we made our way back to meet our driver. And as if the park wanted to give us a proper send-off, we encountered another small group of zebras right there on the track out. We had to stop. We may have taken one or two — or possibly rather more — photographs. It seemed only right.