We drove through Uganda’s largest national park (🎟️45 USD / 24 hrs, 🚙50 USD) and one of its best. Animals are in plentiful supply, but our main target was the raging Murchison Falls, where the Victoria Nile crashes through the rock and descends dramatically towards Lake Albert. Despite a decimation of animal numbers during the war years, numbers have recovered well, and you can expect to see elephants, Rothschild giraffes, lions, Ugandan kobs (antelope), waterbucks, buffaloes, hippos, and crocodiles, not to mention some 460 species of bird.
We arrived late in the evening at the falls and had a chance to park at the camping site not far from the main parking (40000 UGX) or at some community center at Paraa. These falls are the most spectacular thing to happen to the Nile along its 6700km length. The 50m wide Victoria Nile is squeezed here through a 6m gap in the rock and crashes through this narrow gorge with unbelievable power. The 45m waterfall was featured in the Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart film The African Queen. Murchison was even stronger back then, but in 1962, massive floods cut a second channel, creating the smaller Uhuru Falls 200m to the north. We walked without a guide through a beautiful walking trail from the top down to the river and the upper stretch path, which offers views of Uhuru Falls.
Parking location – Murchison Falls: 2.277463N 31.687136E (🚻)