Kitulo sits at around 2,600 metres in the Southern Highlands between the Kipengere, Poroto and Livingstone mountains. It was gazetted in 2005 and is notable for being the first national park in tropical Africa created primarily to protect plant life rather than large mammals.
Local Kinga people call it Bustani ya Mungu — the Garden of God. Between roughly December and April the grassland produces one of the great floral displays in Africa: some 350 vascular plant species have been recorded, including around 45 terrestrial orchids, alongside aster, geranium, giant lobelia and red-hot poker.
Wildlife is limited by comparison, which is the point — this is a walking and botany destination. Birders come for the Denham’s bustard, mountain marsh widow and the endangered Kipengere seedeater.