Semuliki and the Sempaya Hot Springs

The Congo basin,
without leaving Uganda.

Semuliki is the only piece of true Congolian lowland rainforest in East Africa, which is why its bird list contains species you otherwise have to cross into the Congo basin to see. At Sempaya, water surfaces at over 100 degrees and throws a plume two metres high.

Semuliki is an outlier. The Ituri forest of the Congo basin reaches east and stops just inside Uganda, and this 220 square kilometre park is where it stops. The result is a bird list of 441 species, a large number of which cannot be seen anywhere else in East Africa, and a forest that feels and smells different from Kibale an hour and a half away.

Sempaya is the other reason people come. Two groups of hot springs, the male and the female in local naming, where water surfaces at over 100 degrees. The larger throws a plume about two metres high and the guides boil eggs in it in about ten minutes, which sounds like a gimmick and is genuinely startling to stand next to.

It is 90 minutes from Fort Portal, so it works as a day out from the crater lakes without moving lodges. For a birder it is worth a night of its own and two full mornings.