For all visitors that desire to have an up close encounter with the wild fauna in Africa, then a research trip is something I greatly recommend as it will be worth the experience and a very rewarding adventure. This actually is a new and exceptional experience that offers visitors an opportunity to actively directly participate in keeping an eye on not only a number of exotic birds but different mammals as well that live within this park. Normally this is done using locator – devices and gain knowledge of habituation calls, in addition to monitoring the weather, their behavior as well as the surroundings. The finds are added to the databases of the researchers, hence contributing very important information to the general understanding of Africa’s wildlife ecology in particular that in Queen Elizabeth National Park, and assisting to conserve this amazing ecosystem.
The experiential tourism activities currently available are Mongoose Tracking, Lion Tracking, Hippo Census, and Bird Counts. The number of people on each outing is limited in order to reduce stress on the animals and to increase the quality of the experience for visitors.
Actually Experiential tours may run for anything between 1 hour and 3 hours. Normally, they are conducted early in the morning or in the late afternoon, and in some rare instances at night. All the activities should be reserved at the Visitor Information Centre found in Mweya at least one day earlier.