Murchison Falls National Park is Uganda's largest and oldest protected area where the thundering power of the River Nile meets an extraordinary abundance of wildlife across sweeping savannah and dense riverine forest.
Uganda: Queen Elizabeth National Park
🏨 Queen Elizabeth National Park
We rolled into Ihmamba Lakeside Safari Lodge around lunchtime, which was very welcome, I can tell you. After a bit of a rest — well-deserved, as far as we were concerned — we were back on our feet and ready for the afternoon game drive. Our driver came to collect us and we headed off to pick up our Ranger, who’d be joining us out in the park.
Now, the weather hadn’t exactly been playing ball. It had been tipping it down all morning, which is pretty typical for this part of western Uganda — the region sits near the Albertine Rift and gets a fair amount of rainfall, particularly during the two wet seasons. Thankfully, the rain had packed it in by the time we set off, though the sky was still a proper grey blanket overhead. Not exactly what you’d call promising.
We pulled over on the roadside to collect our Ranger, a young woman called Harriet, and it was only then we noticed it — a rather understated sign telling us we were crossing the equator. Right there, on a muddy road in Uganda. The equator bisects Queen Elizabeth National Park, which was established back in 1952 and named in honour of Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to Uganda that same year. You’d think they’d make more of a fuss about the equator crossing, wouldn’t you? A bit of bunting, perhaps. Apparently not.
Harriet turned out to be an absolute gem — chatty, personable, and genuinely knowledgeable about the wildlife in Queen Elizabeth NP. After a quick stop at the Ranger station to check in and get the paperwork sorted, we were off. It was pretty gloomy, we won’t pretend otherwise. The heavy skies combined with the late afternoon light made everything feel a bit flat. We weren’t holding out much hope of seeing anything spectacular, if we’re honest.
🌵 The Candelabra Problem
Queen Elizabeth Park is primarily open scrub grassland, punctuated by patches of bush and trees — classic East African savannah territory, really. But here’s where it gets interesting, and not in a good way. Some years back, someone had the bright idea of planting candelabra trees — a type of euphorbia, technically a succulent rather than a true cactus — to provide additional habitat and shelter for the animals. Sounds sensible enough on paper.
It wasn’t.
The things went completely berserk and spread across huge swathes of the park. Now the park authorities are spending considerable time and resources trying to claw back control and remove them — no easy task. And here’s the kicker: candelabra euphorbia are highly toxic. The milky sap they produce is an irritant that can cause severe skin reactions and is extremely dangerous if ingested. So they don’t even serve as a food source for the wildlife. The only animals that seem to have any use for them whatsoever are the lions and leopards, who’ve worked out that the dense, elevated branches make rather fine spots to lounge about and keep an eye on things. Every cloud, I suppose.
One of the best things about having a Ranger along is that they’re plugged into a network of sightings across the park — a sort of wildlife bush telegraph. It wasn’t long before Harriet’s radio crackled into life and we were off, bumping along the track with a renewed sense of purpose.
We pulled up where a couple of other trucks had already stopped, and there, out in the long grass some distance away, was a lioness with two cubs. Harriet filled us in as we watched. Lions typically give birth to litters of four or five cubs, she told us, but the hard reality is that usually only two make it through. The lionesses simply cannot support more than that. The cubs face all sorts of threats — hyenas will take them given half a chance, and extraordinarily, elephants have been known to crush them. Nature, as ever, playing by its own brutal rules.
It was genuinely lovely to watch the two little ones tumbling about in the grass, though they were quite a distance off and not easy to pick out. After a few minutes we moved on, and our luck promptly improved. We came across a solitary lioness, this time considerably closer to the track. Brilliant views, cracking photos. We were happy chappies.
The drive was winding down by this point, the light fading fast, but Harriet wasn’t quite done with us. On our way out of the park she diverted us to an area where a leopard had recently been spotted. By now it was getting properly gloomy — the kind of dim that makes you squint at everything — but somehow Harriet’s eagle eyes picked out the leopard tucked deep into a tangle of dense bushes. We stared and stared. It took us an embarrassingly long time to see what she was pointing at, and even then it wasn’t exactly a clear view.
After a minute or two the leopard stirred, got to its feet, and melted back into the bush. Gone. That was that for today. We headed out of the park, dropped Harriet off at her post, and made our way back along the road to Ihamba.
We woke to another overcast morning at Ihamba, though that did nothing to dampen our enthusiasm — we were still buzzing about what the day might bring. After breakfast, we set out for another game drive in Queen Elizabeth National Park, with Harriet lined up to be our Ranger again.
When we reached the little cluster of houses at the road junction, we pulled over and had a look around for her — but there was no sign. Our driver got on his phone and rang her, though what followed was one of those mildly baffling conversations where it was clear something had got lost in translation at the other end of the line. We sat there in the truck, exchanging slightly puzzled glances. A few minutes later, Harriet appeared and climbed in — and it turned out there were two Harriets working as Rangers in the park. We’d rung the wrong one. As you do.
As we drove towards the park, Harriet told us something that rather brought us back down to earth. A couple of weeks earlier, she’d been standing at the crossroads — where the main road meets the track that safari vehicles use to enter the park — waiting for a taxi. On the other side of the road, a young woman was also waiting, when suddenly there was a scream and a commotion. Harriet rushed over to find the young lady had been bitten by a puff adder. Help was called, she was taken to hospital, but sadly she didn’t make it. Harriet also mentioned that the night before, a local villager had been killed by an elephant, just outside his village. It’s a sobering reminder, that — this is wild, untamed country, and it’s dangerous even for the people who’ve lived alongside it their entire lives. We’d do well to remember that.
Once we’d checked in at the Ranger station, we headed into the park. It was still early and the morning light was flat and grey, so we kept our expectations in check. There are always antelope about, of course — impala, Uganda kob, that sort of thing — but what we were really after were the big cats. As it happened, we didn’t have to wait long at all. There in the middle of the road lay a large male lion, stretched out with the sort of magnificent indifference that only a lion can pull off. Safari vehicles were quietly gathering around him and he couldn’t have cared less. We got our photos and left him to it.
We hadn’t gone much further down the road when we struck lucky — a lion family, right there in front of us. A young male, a female, and two cubs, just going about their business. We sat quietly and waited, which is always the right call, and our patience paid off beautifully — the adult female began making her way towards us. Lovely stuff.
It didn’t last, though. A couple of the other vehicles in the area clearly hadn’t got the memo about sitting still and keeping schtum. They started jostling for position, edging forward trying to get a better look, and of course the inevitable happened — the whole family spooked and melted away into the scrub. Honestly, it’s one of those things that makes you want to have a quiet word. These are wild animals, not performers. A bit of patience goes an enormously long way out here, and it costs nothing. Ah well. We’d seen them, and that was something.
After a while it was time to move on. The weather wasn’t showing any signs of improvement, so we made our way to a collection point — a sort of informal hub where all the safari vehicles passing through the park tend to congregate for a breather. There were a few vendors dotted about selling the usual bits and pieces to tourists, and a little place where you could get a coffee and something to eat. Very welcome.
Now, the coffee. Ugandan coffee is something of a national treasure — Uganda is actually one of Africa’s largest coffee producers, growing mainly Robusta beans in the fertile soils around the shores of Lake Victoria and the foothills of Mount Elgon. What they served us, though, was proper old-school ground coffee, the grains of which were large and emphatically not the dissolving sort. What followed was a brief but important masterclass in cup geometry — we had to work out the precise angle at which to tip the cup so the grains stayed at the bottom and away from your mouth. Once we’d cracked it, it was a genuinely enjoyable cup. Worth the engineering effort.
Refreshed, we headed back out on the trail. Harriet guided us back to the area where we’d spotted the leopard the previous day. Things weren’t looking terribly promising, if we’re honest, when suddenly a convoy of gleaming white safari vans appeared — and the lead vehicle had a chap standing on the roof clutching a directional antenna. It turns out you can pay for a premium tour package that includes a tracker van and a man with his antenna to electronically locate the big cats for you. Seems like cheating to us, frankly. A bit like bringing a metal detector to a treasure hunt. That said, we weren’t too proud to follow along behind them — and our reward was a wonderfully close encounter with the same female leopard we’d seen the day before.
It was brilliant to see her again. However, it quickly turned rather uncomfortable as more and more safari vehicles piled in and, as so often happens, began pushing in far too close. It was an ugly scene — the kind that makes you wince a bit for the animal. We grabbed a few shots and made the decision to leave her in peace, which felt like the right thing to do. Some of the other vehicles, it has to be said, did not share our sense of occasion.
With that, it was time to drop Harriet back to meet her toddler — priorities firmly in order — and make our way back to Ihamba for lunch.
🚤 Out on the Kazinga Channel
We’d had a full morning already, so the prospect of an afternoon out on the water was a welcome change of pace. The plan was a safari on the Kazinga Channel — a natural 32-kilometre waterway connecting two of the region’s major lakes: Lake George to the east and Lake Edward to the west. Both lakes straddle the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, sitting within Queen Elizabeth National Park, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 1979. A remarkable bit of geography, and a wonderful place to spot wildlife.
We left the lodge and bounced along a narrow, rutted lane to the small dock within the park. En route, we passed what had become an all-too-familiar sight on this trip — the aftermath of a wildfire. Scorched earth, blackened tree trunks, that faint acrid smell still in the air. Never pleasant to see, but wildfires have been part of the natural savannah cycle for thousands of years, clearing old growth and letting fresh vegetation through. Nature doing what nature does, even if it doesn’t look pretty.
At the dock we clambered aboard and headed out into the channel. The boat crossed first to the opposite bank, where the steep earthen sides were peppered with hundreds of small holes — each one the nest entrance of a pied kingfisher. These striking black-and-white birds are known for hovering over water before diving straight down for fish, and there were hundreds of them, completely unbothered by our presence.
From there we chugged slowly downstream. Karen headed upstairs for a better view whilst we settled in below. The guides were excellent — quietly enthusiastic and pointing out species we’d never have found on our own. The stand-out mammal was, without question, the hippo. The Kazinga Channel has one of the highest concentrations of hippos in the world, and on this afternoon we were very much inclined to believe it — in the water, on the banks, lying in the mud, looking deeply unimpressed with everything, as hippos tend to do.
Approaching Lake Edward, we reached a busy fishing village, dozens of local fishermen going about their work — a vivid reminder that this ecosystem supports people as much as wildlife. Just beyond the village sat a vast, tightly packed colony of birds: white pelicans, herons, cormorants, geese, ducks, and looming over the lot of them, the marabou stork — large, hunched, and with a face that only a mother could love.
The boat turned back, pausing briefly to watch hippos spread out on a muddy beach like very large, very grey tourists, before picking up speed for the dock.
It had been yet another remarkable day in Uganda. Heading back to Ihamba felt almost like a shame. Dinner was pleasant enough, though it couldn’t match the previous night’s drama, when a herd of elephants had decided to gatecrash proceedings. With no such excitement forthcoming, we slipped quietly off to bed.
In summary …
Queen Elizabeth National Park is no slouch when it comes to wildlife credentials, and we quickly came to appreciate just how remarkable a place it is. It holds one of the highest biodiversity ratings of any reserve on the entire planet — we’re talking nearly a hundred different animal species living alongside more than 600 types of birds. Six hundred. We kept coming back to that number. That’s not a nature reserve, that’s practically a library of wildlife.
The park covers 1,978 square kilometres of varied terrain, which goes some way to explaining how it supports such an extraordinary range of creatures. It’s particularly well known for its primates — chimpanzees being the headline act — but what really gets people talking are the lions. Now, lions lying around in trees is not, under normal circumstances, something you’d expect to see. Lions are ground animals. Everybody knows that. Nobody told the lions of Queen Elizabeth NP, though, because here they’ve developed the rather peculiar habit of hauling themselves up into fig trees and draping themselves across the branches like oversized, very dangerous cats. Which, of course, is exactly what they are. Wildlife researchers believe the behaviour developed as a way of escaping the heat, avoiding insects on the ground, and getting a better vantage point for spotting prey. Whatever the reason, it’s utterly bizarre and completely brilliant.
And then there are the hippos. The park sits alongside the Kazinga Channel, a 32-kilometre natural waterway connecting Lake George and Lake Edward, and it’s along this stretch of water that some of the largest concentrations of hippos anywhere in Africa have made their home. We’d been warned they were there in numbers. We hadn’t quite appreciated what numbers meant until we saw them.
Planning Your Visit to Queen Elizabeth National Park
| 📍 Location | Kasese and Rubirizi Districts, Western Uganda (bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo) |
|---|---|
| 🕖 Opening Times | Open year-round, 24 hours (gate check-in required) |
| 📞 Phone | +256 (0)414 355 000 |
| 🚗 By Road | Approximately 6 hours from Kampala via the Masaka–Mbarara highway; turn off at Katunguru or enter via Kasese town. Roads are tarmac to the park boundary; 4WD recommended inside the park. |
| 🚌 By Bus | Buses run from Kampala to Kasese and Mbarara; alight at Katunguru junction for the central sector |
| ✈️ By Air | Scheduled and charter flights available to Kasese Airport (KSE) from Entebbe International Airport; airstrips also at Mweya and Ishasha |
| ℹ️ Notes | All visitors must register at a park gate. Night game drives require prior arrangement with UWA rangers. Chimpanzee trekking in Kyambura Gorge requires advance booking. |
🎟️ Entry Fees (per 24 hours)
| Category | East African Citizens | East African Residents | Foreign Nationals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adult | UGX 50,000 | USD $25 | USD $40 |
| Children (5–15) | UGX 20,000 | USD $10 | USD $15 |
| Under 5s | Free | Free | Free |
The Best Time to Visit Uganda
☀️ June to September — Long Dry Season (Peak Season)
The best overall time to visit. Clear skies and firm trails make gorilla trekking in Bwindi and Mgahinga ideal, while thinning vegetation improves game viewing in Queen Elizabeth and Murchison Falls National Parks. Temperatures range from 20°C to 28°C, though highland areas are cool at night. This is peak season — permits and accommodation must be booked months in advance and prices are at their highest.
What to pack: Neutral-coloured long-sleeved shirts and trousers, waterproof jacket, sturdy ankle-support hiking boots, warm fleece for highlands, wide-brimmed hat, SPF 50+ sunscreen, DEET insect repellent, gaiters, binoculars, dry bag, and a Type G plug adaptor.
☀️ December to February — Short Dry Season
The second-best time to visit, with good trekking conditions and a lush green landscape following the October–November rains. Chimpanzee tracking in Kibale National Park is excellent. The Christmas and New Year period brings more visitors, so book ahead. Kidepo Valley in the far north can be very hot and dry.
What to pack: Lightweight breathable clothing, light rain jacket, sunscreen, hat, DEET insect repellent, sturdy trekking boots, neutral safari clothing, fleece for highland evenings, binoculars, and a water bottle with purification filter.
🌧️ October to November — Short Wet Season
Shorter, less intense rains — often afternoon downpours rather than all-day drizzle. Fewer tourists mean easier permit access and lower lodge rates. Birdwatching is superb as European and Asian migrants begin arriving, swelling Uganda’s 1,000-plus species count. Forest trails can be very muddy, making treks more demanding, and a 4WD vehicle is advisable on unpaved roads.
What to pack: Waterproof jacket and overtrousers, waterproof boots and gaiters, quick-dry clothing, extra socks in a dry bag, warm evening layer, DEET repellent, antimalarials, compact umbrella, waterproof camera cover, and robust binoculars.
🌧️ March to May — Long Wet Season (Low Season)
The most challenging time to visit. Heavy sustained rain makes roads difficult, trails slippery, and game viewing harder. Some remote lodges close for maintenance. Gorilla permits are easiest to obtain and lodge rates are at their lowest. Birdwatching is outstanding, the landscape is strikingly green, and national parks feel wonderfully quiet. Best suited to experienced tropical travellers with flexible itineraries.
What to pack: Heavy-duty waterproof jacket and overtrousers, fully waterproof boots, gaiters, multiple changes of quick-dry clothing, large dry bags, trekking poles, DEET repellent, antimalarials, waterproof camera case, waterproof document wallet, and a portable power bank.
📊 Uganda Season Summary
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🌍 The Best Time to Visit Uganda — Overall
For most travellers, June to September is the clear choice — reliable weather, prime gorilla trekking, and excellent game viewing outweigh the higher costs and need to plan early. Budget travellers or keen birdwatchers will find October–November and December–February strong alternatives. March to May rewards those who come prepared and prize solitude over convenience.
Ihamba Lakeside Safari Lodge
There are many lodges and places to stay around Queen Elizabeth National Park. We were booked into the Ihamba Safari Lakeside Lodge. The lodge offers en-suite chalets with a large comfortable bedroom. The lodge chalets have a balcony that looks out across a landscaped area towards Lake Edward in the distance (it is quite a way to be fair)
The drinks here are very reasonable. Whilst we are vegan usually we decided that in Africa it would be almost impossible to stick to a strict vegan diet for our 6-month tour. Ihamba had a vegetarian option at meal times – which was very good (we had a lot of Indian-style dishes!)
The lodge is small and intimate so you will not feel overcrowded here. The lodge is one open-plan space with a dining area (which extends outside) and a general lounge area.
There is also a small pool to relax by.
You can get wi-fi (which as you might expect is not great – no streaming Netflix here!) in the Lodge building but not in the chalets.
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