My first visit to Akagera National Park in Rwanda was January, 2017. Rwanda Gorilla Safaris offered me wildlife tours in Rwanda of this the park, which is located along the border of Tanzania, approximately 120km east of the capital, Kigali. The Rwanda Development Board and the non-profit African parks jointly manage Akagera. As we drove through the park, I was amazed how the bush in Akagera is with its extensive broad- leafed woodland. The vegetation is also quite varied here with areas of tangled acacia woodland, and beautiful vast Savannah plains of grassland. It struck me how different Akagera is from the breezy green rolling hills that characterize much of Rwanda.

The national park is named after the Akagera River, the most remote source of the Nile, located along the park’s eastern border. There are extensive wetlands in the eastern section of the park. I was impressed with the wide diversity small area. As we were driving, the landscape seemed to change every few minutes, the scenery in Akagera is absolutely stunning, and it’s one of the most beautiful national parks that I have visited in East Africa. Akagera is surrounded with beautiful forest-fringed lakes in the east and tall mountains in the west. This extensive biodiversity combined with the abundant wildlife makes Akagera a photographer’s paradise.

Akagera combines well with Nyungwe and the Volcanoes National park to offer a great safari element as it is home to many large plains game species as well as species restricted to the papyrus swamps such as the sitatunga and the sought after shoe bill stork. Within 15 minutes of entering the park, we saw elephants, buffalo, topi, zebra, water buck, roan antelope and eland. The wildlife here is accustomed to visitors, so they seemed relatively undisturbed by our presence. This gave me the opportunity to take a lot of photos of the wildlife at a reasonable distance without them fleeing. i also saw a dozen of antelopes and it seemed that around every corner.

Due to its wide variety of habitats, Akagera is an important ornithological site with nearly 500 bird species and is the second most important birding area after Nyungwe National Park. The rare and elusive shoebill shares the papyrus with other rarities such as the papyrus gonalek and countless other water birds that inhabit the wetlands in large numbers.

One of the highlight s of my experience on Akagera was seeing the pods of hippos in various lakes. While I was there, they were quite active, and it was great to see them frolicking in the water together. I was able to observe a few individuals out of the water, which gave me the first opportunity to see how large they really are. In the same area of the hippos, I was fortunate to see a Nile crocodile, basking in the sun as he lay in the mud- banks.

For visitors who are interested in spending the night, there two facilities in the park: Ruzizi Tented Lodge in the Riverine forest on the edge of Lake Ihema and Akagera Game Lodge located on a ridge overlooking Lake Ihema. Other activities offered to visitors at Akagera include boat safari’s night drives and camping. I highly recommend visiting Akagera National Park. It will be an experience of a lifetime.