Destinations

A narrow park between the Rift Valley escarpment and a soda lake, known for tree-climbing lions and strong flamingo numbers.

An isolated volcanic range forming the Rift Valley's eastern wall, with waterfalls, moorland and a key watershed role for central Kenya's rivers.

A fenced soda-lake sanctuary close to Nairobi, protecting both black and white rhino alongside large, shifting flocks of lesser and greater flamingo.

A papyrus wetland on Lake Victoria near Entebbe, and one of East Africa's most reliable places to find a shoebill stork by dugout canoe.

Ancient baobabs and some of Africa's largest elephant herds, drawn to the Tarangire River through the dry season.

A small, lion-free park at Arusha's edge, built around Ngurdoto Crater, the flamingo-dotted Momella Lakes and Mount Meru, Tanzania's second-highest peak.

Zanzibar's UNESCO-listed old town, a maze of coral-stone buildings and carved doors built on centuries of spice, ivory and slave trade.

Tanzania's largest national park, with one of the country's biggest elephant and lion populations along the Great Ruaha River, far from the northern circuit's crowds.

A dedicated sanctuary protecting Uganda's reintroduced southern white rhinos, tracked on foot after the species was wiped out nationally by the 1980s.

Open plains beneath Mount Kilimanjaro, with some of the best elephant viewing in East Africa and underground springs that keep wetlands green through the dry season.

A freshwater Rift Valley lake explored mainly by boat, with strong hippo and bird populations and Crescent Island's predator-free walking safari nearby.

A volcanic caldera roughly 20 km across, holding one of Africa's highest sustained densities of wildlife within its own walls year-round.