Kidepo Valley National Park is a 1,442 square kilometers national park in the Karamoja nestled in the rugged hills and valleys of north Eastern Uganda and approximately 520 kilometers by road, northeast of Kampala, Uganda’s capital.
It is dominated by the 2,750 metres (9,020 ft) Mount Morungole and transected by the Kidepo and Narus rivers.
Gazetted as a national park in 1962, its diverse landscape, from lush mountain ranges to vast plains, home to almost 500 bird species like Ostrich, Kori Bustard and Karamoja Apalis and 77 different mammals, Roam the savannahs, and you will likely see an impressive collection of fauna including hartebeest and giraffes.
The Kanangorok Hot Springs is a short walk away from the international border between Uganda and South Sudan.
Kidepo ranks among Africa’s finest wildernesses. From Apoka in the heart of the park, a savannah landscape extends far beyond the gazetted area, towards horizons outlined by distant mountain ranges.
The local communities around the park include pastoral Karamojong people, similar to the Maasai of Kenya, and the IK, a hunter-gatherer tribe.
The park has one of the most exciting faunas of any Ugandan national park. Along with the neighboring Karamoja region, it houses many species found nowhere else in Uganda, including the greater and lesser kudu, eland and cheetah. Carnivores here include the lion, leopard, spotted hyena and black-backed and side-striped jackals. Other large species regularly seen here are elephant, Burchell’s zebra, bushpig, warthog, Rothschild’s giraffe, Cape buffalo, bushbuck, bush duiker, Defassa waterbuck, Bohor reedbuck, Jackson’s hartebeest and Oribi.