Uganda

If Rwanda is elegant and orderly, Uganda is wild and exuberant. A country where nature overflows, where vegetation invades everything, where every corner hides life. Here are half the remaining mountain gorillas, in impenetrable Bwindi Forest. Here are Kibale's chimpanzees, the planet's highest primate concentration. And here the Nile is born, the world's longest river, emerging from Lake Victoria. What distinguishes Uganda is its diversity in a compact space. Queen Elizabeth National Park offers classic safari with lions, elephants, hippos and the famous tree-climbing lions. Murchison Falls is where the Nile narrows and plunges through a seven-metre gorge with earth-shaking force. And then there are the primates: gorillas in Bwindi, chimpanzees in Kibale, colobus and mangabeys in half a dozen forests. Uganda is more adventurous than Rwanda, less polished, more authentic. Roads are longer, lodges more rustic (though there are extraordinary exceptions), but the reward is being in places where you feel like the first visitor. It is Africa in its purest state.