Kidepo Valley

You can spend a morning here
without meeting another vehicle.

Kidepo sits in the far north east against the South Sudan border, ringed by mountains, with species that exist nowhere else in Uganda: cheetah, ostrich, greater and lesser kudu. It takes a flight or two long days to reach, which is exactly why it is empty.

Kidepo is 1,442 square kilometres of savanna in the far north east, hemmed by the Morungole range and running to the South Sudan border. It receives a small fraction of the visitors Queen Elizabeth does, and the difference is not subtle: you will regularly be the only vehicle in the valley.

It also holds animals you will not see anywhere else in the country. Cheetah, ostrich, greater and lesser kudu, and Guenther's dik-dik are Kidepo species. The herd structure is different too, with buffalo moving in numbers that no longer happen further south.

The honest part is the journey. It is two hard days by road from Kampala, or a charter flight. Either way you are committing three nights and real money to get here, and it only makes sense on a longer trip or for someone who has done the standard circuit and wants the opposite of it.