Explore Lake Mburo National Park Uganda
Lake Mburo national park is the smallest of Uganda’s savannah national parks and is located in Lyatonde district in the western part of Uganda after Masaka. The park is situated about 30 kilometers by road, east of Mbarara, the largest town in the sub-region.
Lake Mburo National Park harbors several wildlife species not observed else where in Uganda and is the only park in Uganda that supports a population of impala (from which Kampala city derives its name), and only one of the three protected areas countrywide where Burchell’s zebra occurs, the other two being the far less accessible Kidepo and Pian-Upe.
On your to the park, you will drive through a magnificent hilly country and lush cultivation on an approximately four-hour journey.En route you will enjoy views of the terrain and stopover at the Equator for photographs and ‘polar-water experiment’, then a local community popular for making local drums (Mpabire Village), gardens, crafts shops and fruit markets. Visit the Igongo Cultural Centre the museum of South Western Uganda 12km along the scenic Mbarara Masaka highway, which is an ultimate destination for lovers of history, art, culture.
The other wildlife that can be viewed are the antelopes and easily seen are topi, bush buck, common duiker, oribi, Defassa water buck and Bofor reed buck, while the lake and lush fringing vegetation support healthy populations of buffalo, warthog, bush-pig and hippopotamus and the large herds of the majestic eland that keep roaming the park including the sitatunga that confines itself to the swampy areas of the park.They are only two diurnal primates that can be viewed in Lake Mburo: the vervet monkey and olive baboon while nocturnal calls of the spotted hyena can be heard through the night alongside the leopard,side-striped jackal and various smaller predators and most visibly the white-tailed mongoose and three otter species resident in the lakes.
Lake Mburo National Park is a home to the Ankole long-horned cattle rared by the traditional Bahima pastoralists, magnificent herds graze peacefully alongside the wildlife and this is determined by the dry and wet seasons that controls animal movements.On your game drive in the park you will enjoy views of animals since the park is to about 69 species of mammals found here at Lake like zebras, antelopes, birds, fabulous views of Buffaloes, Zebras, Leopards, a variety of antelopes, warthogs, and one of the few places to view zebras in Uganda.
The park consists of 5 lakes within the Park and you can enjoy a boat ride on Lake Mburo where you will enjoy views of crocodiles, lots of hippos and a variety of birds to see as the highlight of your trip in this park since they are over 350 species of birds such as the Red-faced Barbet, only seen in Lake Mburo, the endemic African Finfoot and the rare Shoebill also thePapyrus Yellow Warbler, Saddle-billed Stork, Brown-chested Lapwing, African-wattled Lapwing, Carruther’s Cisticola, Tabora (Long-tailed) Cisticola, African Scops Owl, Abyssinian Ground Hornbill and White-winged Warbler. Lake Mburo National Park is the ultimate birders paradise with the variety of colorful species of birds found here to the delight of the visitors and it can a ultimate stopover to cut the journey to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park .
