Primate Safaris
Contact us
T : +256 392 159 498
T : +9 1 9544 666 665
E : info@primatesafaris.com
Primate Safaris
Contact us
T : +256 392 159 498
T : +9 1 9544 666 665
E : info@primatesafaris.com
National Park
Murchison Falls National Park
About the Park
The Nile doesn't ask permission.
For millions of years, the world's longest river has carved its way northward through the heart of Africa unhurried, unstoppable, ancient beyond comprehension. And then, in the northwest of Uganda, it does something extraordinary. The entire force of the Victoria Nile squeezes through a rocky gorge just seven meters wide and explodes out the other side in a thundering white curtain of water that shakes the ground beneath your feet and fills the air with mist and sound and a kind of primal energy that you feel in your chest long before you see it with your eyes.
That is Murchison Falls. And that is just the beginning.
Uganda's largest and oldest national park stretches across 3,840 square kilometers of open savanna, riverine forest, and woodland in northwestern Uganda a landscape so vast and so varied that it has been drawing wildlife and wonder-seekers for nearly a century. Gazatted as a wildlife reserve in 1926, Murchison is the grand old institution of Ugandan conservation, the park that started it all, and it shows in the sheer abundance of life that moves across its plains and along its river banks every single day.
The game drives here are extraordinary. Rothschild's giraffes one of the most endangered giraffe subspecies on earth have long called the northern plains home, their long necks swaying above the Borassus palms in a sight that never loses its magic no matter how many times you see it. Elephant herds roam freely, their numbers steadily growing a conservation success story playing out in real time. Lions hunt the open savanna where over 35,000 Uganda kob graze in golden-coated abundance. Leopards move quietly through the riverine forest. Buffalo herds, numbering in the thousands, raise dust on the horizon at dusk.
And then there is the river. A boat cruise up the Victoria Nile toward the base of the falls is one of the great wildlife experiences in all of East Africa. The banks are thick with hippos hundreds of them, grunting and jostling and regarding your boat with enormous, sleepy indifference. Nile crocodiles, the largest population in Uganda, lie motionless on the sand like ancient stones. Elephants wade in at the water's edge. Over 556 bird species line the banks — the shoebill standing magnificent and prehistoric in the shallows, the African fish eagle calling across the water, the goliath heron patient and tall against the reeds.
And if the savanna and the river are not enough, the Budongo Forest one of East Africa's finest mahogany forests lies to the south, harboring over 600 chimpanzees available for trekking, along with red-tailed monkeys, blue monkeys, and black-and-white colobus swinging through the canopy overhead.
Murchison Falls does not do anything quietly. It is big, bold, and completely overwhelming in the best possible way a park that reminds you, emphatically and repeatedly, that Uganda's wildlife story is one of the greatest on earth.
Wildlife
- Lion
- Leopard
- Elephant
- Cape Buffalo
- Giraffe
- Hippopotamus
- Chimpanzee
- Hyena
- Warthog
- Crocodile
- Vulture
- African Fish Eagle
- Pelican
- Crowned Crane
- Marabou Stork
- Impala
- Waterbuck
- Hartebeest
- Baboon
- Vervet Monkey
- Jackal
- Shoebill
- Kingfisher
- Weaver Bird