The initial part of the drive takes you through the former Paraa Lodge and park. However, currently baboons take up evening residence on the top floor. There is also a resident leopard to be seen around the lodge. There is also a large family of banded mongoose that lives around the old lodge. There is also seen along the road that winds through the Paraa complex.
Mongooses are active during the day and sleep at night in thick bush or disused ant-hills.
The drive to the start of the Buligi Circuit is about 30km from the ferry. The most striking features on the landscape of this drive are firstly the skeleton trees that are scattered over the plains and then the Borassus Palm grasslands to the north of the road. The Borassus grassland is quite a strange ecosystem. It is found in West and Central Africa and only in the Karamoja District of Uganda. The ecosystem evolves from a woodland or a wooden grassland with perhaps a scattering of Borassus.