Bradt Wildlife Guide: East African Wildlife

About this book

The new, extensively revised, third edition of Bradt's East African Wildlife guide provides a user-friendly overview of East Africa's peerless wildlife not only 'big game' and other large mammals (an alluring list that includes elephant, lion, leopard, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, gorilla and chimpanzee), but also birds, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates. Excellent for independent travellers, it excels as a standalone guide combining both wildlife and visitor information, and is also a perfect complement to traditional field guides or to Bradt travel guides to Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda.

From the peaks of Kilimanjaro to the sultry Indian Ocean coastline, with a range of habitats that span parched desert and vast transparent lakes, open savannah and tropical rainforest, east Africa is simply the world's finest wildlife-viewing destination. Straddling the Equator and bisected by the magnificent Great Rift Valley, it is a true Mecca for wildlife enthusiasts. It harbours the continent's most popular safari locations, including legendary reserves such as the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Maasai Mara, Samburu, Murchison Falls, Bwindi and Tsavo.

Written by Philip Briggs, the world's foremost guidebook writer on Africa and a wildlife expert, East African Wildlife covers the fauna of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. Some 240 colour images by acclaimed photographer Ariadne Van Zandebergen illustrate many animals likely to be encountered, while the engaging text extends beyond basic identification features to illuminate the natural history, habits, whereabouts and ecology of the species that visitors will encounter. To enable you to plan a safari that suits your interests, East African Wildlife offers top tips for optimising your wildlife experience, a 'where to go' overview which outlines the key wildlife attractions at major sites within each country, and advice on when to visit. There's even an engaging section about 'wildlife from your window', for when you are staying in towns and hotels.

Accessibly written and beautifully illustrated, the guide will appeal both to the first-time visitor and to the serious naturalist seeking a compact volume to carry around and one that will sit proudly on bookshelves thereafter as a compelling souvenir of an unforgettable holiday.

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Biography

Philip Briggs is one of the world's most experienced and prolific guidebook writers, who has been exploring the highways, byways and backwaters of Africa since 1986 and has since expanded into Asia, South America and Europe. In 1991, he wrote Bradt's guide to South Africa, the first guidebook published internationally after Nelson Mandela's release. During the 1990s, he wrote a series of pioneering Bradt travel guides to destinations that were then and some still are otherwise practically uncharted by the travel publishing industry. These included the first dedicated guidebooks to Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Ghana and Rwanda, all of which are regularly updated for new editions. More recently, he authored the first dedicated English-language guidebooks to Somaliland and Suriname, and he has written or updated Bradt guides to Sri Lanka, North Macedonia and The Peloponnese. When not travelling, he lives in the sleepy South African village of Wilderness.

Ariadne Van Zandbergen is a freelance photographer and tour guide. Born and raised in Belgium, she travelled through Africa from Morocco to South Africa in 1994-1995 and is now resident in Wilderness, Western Cape, South Africa. She has visited 25 African countries, and her photographs have appeared in numerous books (including Bradt's East African Wildlife), magazines, newspapers, maps, periodicals and pamphlets. In addition to co-photographing the sumptuous coffee-table book Africa: Continent of Contrasts (Struik/New Holland), she runs her own online photo library.