Murchison Falls National Park

Murchison Falls National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Murchison Falls is Uganda's largest park and the one closest to Kampala for a proper savanna safari, about five hours by road, and it is sold almost entirely as two- to five-day packages from Kampala or Entebbe. The two-day version drives up on the first morning via the Ziwa rhino sanctuary, does the boat cruise on the Nile to the base of the falls in the afternoon and a dawn game drive on the north bank before the drive home; the three-day version adds the hike to the top of the falls and a second game drive, which is the right length. Four- and five-day safaris combine the park with Kibale's chimpanzees or Budongo forest, and the long Uganda circuits continue to Queen Elizabeth and Bwindi.

Inside the park, the game drives in open vehicles, the launch trip to the falls, the delta cruise for shoebills, the Budongo chimp tracking and the hot-air balloon at dawn are booked through the Uganda Wildlife Authority, the lodges and the local operators at Masindi and Paraa; the falls boat runs twice a day and the delta boat in the morning. The park entry fee is per person per day with the vehicle extra, and the boat, the chimp permit and the rhino sanctuary are separate, so check what a package price includes. Fly-in safaris land at Pakuba and Bugungu. Independent visitors with a 4×4 can self-drive and take the ferry across the Nile at Paraa.

Visiting Murchison Falls National Park: what you will see

The park was gazetted in 1952 from the older Bunyoro game reserve and covers 3,893 square kilometres of savanna, woodland and riverine forest either side of the Victoria Nile, which crosses it for 115 kilometres from the Karuma falls to Lake Albert. Murchison Falls itself is the centrepiece: the whole Nile squeezes through a gap seven metres wide in the rift escarpment and drops 43 metres in a roar of spray, and it is seen from the water on the launch trip, which passes hippos, crocodiles, elephants, buffalo and waterbirds on the banks for three hours upstream to the foot of the falls, and from above on the short hike from the boat landing to the top, where the ground shakes.

The northern bank, reached by the Paraa ferry, holds the open grasslands where Rothschild's giraffes, Uganda kob, hartebeest, oribi, elephants and lions are seen on the Buligi and Albert Nile tracks, and leopards along the river; the southern bank is woodland with the Budongo forest and its chimpanzees at the edge. The delta where the Nile enters Lake Albert is the best place in Uganda to see the shoebill stork, and the birdlist runs past 450 species. The Ziwa sanctuary on the road up has Uganda's only wild rhinos, tracked on foot. Oil development on the north bank and the Karuma dam have changed the edges of the park, but the river and the falls are as Baker described them in 1864.

Murchison Falls National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open around the clock to overnight guests, with game drives from 6.30 am to 7 pm; the launch to the falls departs at about 8 am and 2 pm. The dry seasons from December to February and June to September are the best for game viewing and for the drive up, with the animals along the river; the rains in March to May and October to November make the tracks heavy but the park green, and the birding is best then. The afternoon boat has the softer light on the falls. Allow three days from Kampala. Kibale Forest and Queen Elizabeth lie to the south-west on the long circuit, and Budongo forest is on the park's southern edge.