Murchison Falls National Park

Overview

Murchison Falls National Park, part of the greater Murchison Falls Conservation Area (MFCA), offers excellent wildlife viewing. The MFCA includes Kaniyo Pabidi, which is a great place for chimpanzee tracking. Most big safari animals are easily seen, including four of the Big Five. The Victoria Nile bisects the park. At Murchison Falls, the Nile is channeled through a narrow cleft in the Rift Valley escarpment. Boat trips to the spectacular Murchison Falls, perhaps the most impressive waterfall in East Africa, are a highlight – especially if you hike to the top where the immense power of the Falls is best appreciated.

Murchison Falls Highlights

• Africa Big 5 Game Drive Trail
• The Victoria Nile bisects the park
• The Murchison Falls narrow cleft in the Rift Valley escarpment
• River Boat Ride for nile river shores wildlife
• Lion Safari
• Daytime temperatures of around 31°C/88°F and cooling down at night to around 18°C/64°F
• Wet season runs from March to November and June to July
• Located 305km/190mi north of Kampala – 4 Hours drive
• Include Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary for complet big 5 Safari

Interested in visiting Murchison Falls National Park?

About Murchison Falls National Park

Murchison Falls National Park is the Uganda’s largest wildlife park lying at the northern end of the Albertine Rift Valley, where the bulky Bunyoro escarpment merges into the vast plains of Acholi land. One of Uganda’s oldest conservation areas, it was initially gazetted as a game reserve in 1926 to protect a savanna that Winston Churchill described in 1907 as ‘Kew Gardens and the zoo combined on an unlimited scale

Murchison Falls has received many notable foreign visitors. In 1907, Winston Churchill hiked, boated and bicycled up the Nile corridor to the Falls. He was followed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1909 during a hunting safari that cost, by today’s prices, a phenomenal US$1.8m!

In 1951, the Falls provided a backdrop for Humphrey Bogart in John Huston’s famous movie, The African Queen which was filmed on location along the Murchison Nile and on Lake Albert. British royals have also visited Murchison, the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) in 1930 and the Queen Mother in 1959.
The least happy celebrity visitor was Ernest Hemingway in 1954 who literally dropped in. His intention was simply to overfly the waterfall but his plane clipped an old telegraph wire strung across the gorge and cart wheeled into the river line forest. Hemingway and his wife were rescued and taken to Butiaba where their rescue plane crashed on takeoff.

The Murchison Falls National Park is bisected by the Victoria Nile which first races down 80km of white-water rapids before plunging 40m over the remnant rift valley wall at Murchison Falls, the centre piece of the park.

Qucik Safari: 3 Days Murchison Falls Safari

This waterfall was named in 1864 by the explorer Samuel Baker who considered it ‘the most important object through the entire course of the river.’ The Falls drains the last of the river’s energy, transforming it into a broad, placid stream that flows quietly across the rift valley floor for 55km to Lake Albert.

This stretch of river provides one of Uganda’s most memorable wildlife spectacles. Regular visitors include elephant, giraffe and buffalo while hippopotamus and Nile crocodile are permanent residents.

The park covers 3,893km2 and is Uganda’s largest protected area. Today it is part of the even larger Murchison Falls Protected Area (5,072km2) which includes the adjoining Karuma and Bugungu wildlife reserves.

The Albert Nile corridor is Uganda’s lowest area (612m at Delta Point) and temperatures can be hot with a mean maximum of 29OC. The hottest times are mid December to mid February and June-July, tempered by rainy seasons in April and November.