Reviews of Pian Upe (From 3 Acclaimed Safari Experts)

Expert

Ariadne van Zandbergen –

ZA

Visited: Wet season

Ariadne is a renowned African wildlife photographer whose work is featured in many well-known guidebooks and magazines.

Pian Upe: Land Of The Karamojong

Overall rating

1/5

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Pian Upe Wildlife Reserve lies in the Karamoja region of Northeast Uganda. This area had security issues until quite recently, but it is now safe and being developed for tourism. On my quick visit in the region, I found very little wildlife present. I guess the area isn’t very well protected and poaching is rampant. The road network is also very limited. The Karamojong people of this region are traditional nomadic pastoralists. A visit to one of their villages near the base of Mount Kadam or Mount Moroto is recommended, and maybe a more valid reason to come up to this remote corner of the country than a safari.

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Expert

Philip Briggs –

ZA

Visited: Multiple times

Philip is an acclaimed travel writer and author of many guidebooks, including the Bradt guides to Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa.

Empty Plains Below Majestic Mount Elgon

Overall rating

2/5

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Despite being the second-largest protected area in Uganda after Murchison Falls, this undeveloped reserve has little to recommend it as a safari destination. I found the scenery memorable, with the immense Mount Elgon rising to 4,321m in the south and the bleak volcanic plugs of Mount Kadam to the north of dry plains covered in acacia scrub. Also of interest are the two staunchly pastoralist tribes for which it is named: the Pian being part of a subgroup of the cattle-rustling Karimojong, and the Upe, a Kalenjin-speaking people more widely referred to as the Pokot within Kenya. However, wildlife is thin on the ground, and while leopard, cheetah, plains zebra, buffalo, eland, hartebeest, greater kudu and topi are all reputedly present, we didn’t see any along the limited public road system. On the plus side, we had some good sightings of the localised patas monkey, and the dry plains harbour several dry-country birds with a restricted distribution in Uganda, for instance ostrich, Jackson’s hornbill and white-headed buffalo weaver.

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Expert

Charlotte Beauvoisin –

UG

Visited: November

Charlotte lives in Uganda and is a writer, blogger, volunteer and promoter of birding, conservation and responsible tourism. She writes for Fodor’s, Horizon Guides and Bradt, and runs an award-winning blog.

An Altogether Different Country

Overall rating

4/5

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Bush Vibe:

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If you think of Uganda and picture forests and hilly banana plantations, then the northeast will be a revelation: wide stretches of flat ground with a scattering of tiny villages and the mountains of Napak, Kadam and Moroto frame expansive horizons.

Pian is one of the few places in Uganda where you can see cheetah, Bohor reedbuck, ostrich, klipspringer and roan antelope. Our bird-monitoring team added greyish eagle owl, endemic Karamoja apalis and stone partridges to their life lists.

On my last trip to Pian Upe, we drove mile after mile of dusty red marram roads, as (slow) works were underway to tarmac the road. Thankfully, we had a plan (and a guide who spoke one of the local languages). Without one, you’ll find few tourism facilities, but changes are afoot. Nubian giraffes have been reintroduced, the airstrip at Kidepo is being worked on, and the reserve is due for an upgrade to national park status. I’m curious to return for longer: not only to search for ‘Karamoja Special’ birds but to explore local cultures. Despite the very obvious human poverty, I was really struck by the colourful traditional-style dress and the radically different peoples they represent.

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