The largest and oldest national park, Murchison Falls National Park, locally known as Kabalega National Park, is located in north-western Uganda, about 305 kilometers from Kampala.
The park has an area of about 3840 sq km. It was first gazetted in 1926 as a game reserve and gained National Park status in 1952.
It is divided into two parts, South and North, each with different animal visibility due to various factors such as food distribution, available vegetation, poaching threats, diseases, and many others.
The northern section of the park contains savanna and borassus palms, acacia trees, and riverine woodland, whereas the southern part is dominated by woodland and forest patches.
Game drives in the savanna grasslands and riverine woodland in the northern part of the park provide excellent sightings of lions, elephants, buffaloes, giraffes, and the Ugandan antelope Kob.
Murchison Falls National Park lies at the northern end of the Albertine Rift Valley, where the sweeping Bunyoro escarpment tumbles into vast, palm-dotted savanna. The park is bisected by the Victoria Nile, which plunges 45 meters over the remnant rift valley wall, creating Murchison Falls, the centerpiece of the park.
The Nile thunders through a narrow canyon and cascades down to become a tranquil river. The riverbanks are home to crocodiles, water-bucks, hippopotamus, and buffaloes.
The park’s indigenous wildlife includes baboons, lions, leopards, elephants, gazelles, giraffes, chimpanzees, and many bird species.
The park is home to over 76 different wildlife species and 451 bird species, making it a great destination for both game viewing and bird-watching safaris.
Murchison Falls National Park features the awe-inspiring Murchison Falls, where the Nile River forces its way through a narrow gorge.
Samuel and Florence Baker renamed these falls Murchison Falls in 1863, and they were credited with having discovered the falls. However, Pajao is the ancestral name of Murchison Falls, given by the Bagungu people, one of the communities that have lived there since time immemorial.
They saw it as a special natural site and were even able to predict rainfall based on the different ways the falls sounded at various times.
Idi Amin renamed the falls ‘Kabalega Falls’ when he was president of Uganda, but the then President Milton Obote brought back the Murchison name, which is still also the name of the National Park at large.
The sight of Murchison Falls is one of the most satisfying discoveries along the great R. Nile, which can be best accessed via a boat cruise upstream from the Lake Albert delta.
