The park covers nearly 1.8 million hectares - that is bigger than the entire country of Lebanon. Inside its borders you can find three very different types of landscape: rolling savanna grasslands that turn golden in the dry season, low-lying floodplains where rivers spread wide and hippos wallow, and rocky upland cliffs where baboons perch and look out over the plains below.
Manovo-Gounda is home to an extraordinary list of animals. Elephants, lions, leopards, cheetahs, African wild dogs, black rhinoceros, bongo antelopes and giant eland all live here. The park sits along ancient migration routes that animals have followed for thousands of years, moving between water sources as the seasons change.
The park is also a brilliant place to watch birds. More than 320 different bird species have been recorded here. The skies fill with crowned cranes performing their dancing displays, secretary birds striding across the grass, and huge saddle-billed storks wading through the shallows in search of fish.
The rivers inside the park are full of life too. Nile crocodiles bask on muddy banks, and hippos grunt and splash in the deeper pools. At the edges of the floodplains, herds of waterbuck and kob antelopes gather in the evenings to drink.