Pian Upe Wildlife Reserve

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Expert

Philip Briggs –

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

Wildlife:

Bush Vibe:

Scenery:

Birding:

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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