Lake Mburo National park is a very special place, each part of it is alive with a variety of interests and colour . It is situated in the Mbarara district and it is the smallest of Uganda’s savannah National parks.
It’s sculptured landscape with rolling grassy hills and idyllic lake shores support a wealth of wildlife. Its mosaic habitats of dry hillside, rocky outcrops, bushes, thicket, open wooded savanna, forests lakes and swamps are home to a surprising diversity of plants and animals. Lake Mburo national park is famous for its richness in biodiversity.
It has about 68 different species of mammals. The most common are zebras, Impalas, buffaloes, Topis and eland that are herbivores. There are also leopards, hyenas and jackals.
The park covers 260 sq km and lies along Mbarara road within easy access of Kampala. It is an attractive park of rolling hills and open grassy valleys, interspersed with thickets, woodlands and rich wetlands.
Enjoy this rarely visited park and enjoy such sights as the Impala, waterbuck, cape buffalo, zebra, eland and leopard.
One of my favourite and also a very popular tourist spot in Uganda is the Lake Mburo National Park which is located along the country’s Western end. I was staying in the city of Mbarara when I visited this park. The distance between the park and the city was approximately thirty kilometres.
The most noteworthy feature of the park as my guide informed me was the layering of ancient metamorphic rock present underneath it.
This metamorphic rock is almost 500 years old which makes it very ancient and precious. Lake Mburo National Park also houses a wide variety of bird species conjugated with many other animals such as buffalo, leopard, hyena, zebra etc.
The park was of all the more attractive to me since lake Munro along with other 13 lakes combined together to form Uganda’s wetland system. This system is of immense credence to the country as a whole and has had a major contribution in Uganda’s socio-economic context. This wetland system is nearly 50km long.
My interest in Lake Mburo National Park prompted me to dig out its history and my guide was of immense service to me in this regard. I came to know that the park used to be an open savanna once, however by the time I went to visit it had become a woodland to a large extent.
Some traces of Savanna still exist in its Western end. However, there are some rocky ridges, strands of forest and bits of swamp etc. which intersperse this open savanna.
I also mentioned formerly that the myriad of animal and bird species found there amazed me. It just further reiterated what my guide had told me already that Lake Mburo National Park in Uganda is a unique habitat. In fact, it is not only a unique habitat but it is also a major contributor to the country’s social and economic value.