3 Day Murchison Falls Safari
Uganda · Murchison Falls National Park & Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Customisable itinerary
- Private departure
Trip overview
Uganda’s largest park, built around a waterfall where the entire Victoria Nile is squeezed through a gorge barely seven metres wide and dropped forty three metres into what the early explorers called the devil’s cauldron. Three days covers the three things Murchison is famous for: the Nile launch cruise to the base of the falls, the hike up the gorge to the top, and dawn game drives on the Buligi circuit north of the river, where the wildlife numbers are the highest of any Ugandan park. Rhino tracking on foot at Ziwa breaks the drive both ways.
Customise this trip for a perfect match
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Private and tailor-made Your own vehicle, driver guide and pace. Nothing on this page is fixed — days can be swapped, added or dropped.
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Routed by people who drive it Every itinerary here was planned by someone who has driven the road, and the planner who answers you is the one who builds it.
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Licensed and accredited Registered with the Rwanda Development Board and a member of the Rwanda Tours and Travel Association.
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Support while you travel One number reaches the Kigali office around the clock for the whole time you are on the ground.
A draft itinerary costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Tell us what you would change and a planner rewrites it as many times as it takes.
The route
- Start and finish
- Starts and ends in Entebbe or Kampala
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- How it runs
- Road transfers, with a fly-in option
- Countries
- Uganda
Itinerary
Day 1
Entebbe To Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary And Murchison Falls
An early pickup, then north out of Kampala through the Luwero triangle and Nakasongola. About two and a half hours up we stop at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary, the only place in Uganda where you can see wild rhino, which were poached out of the country entirely during the 1970s and 1980s. Tracking here is done on foot with rangers, walking through the bush to find a group and watching from a safe distance, and coming across a rhino at ground level rather than from a vehicle is a completely different proposition. Allow around two hours. Then on north, past Budongo Forest, reaching Murchison in the late afternoon. The drive covers roughly 305 kilometres over five to six hours with the stop. We take you straight to the top of the falls, where you can hear the water long before you see it and a permanent rainbow sits in the spray. Check in, dinner, early night.
Day 2
Buligi Game Drive And The Nile Launch Cruise
Across the river on the Paraa ferry at first light and onto the Buligi circuit, a peninsula about ten kilometres wide between the Victoria Nile flowing into Lake Albert and the Albert Nile flowing out of it. Open grassland studded with Borassus palms, and the strongest wildlife morning most visitors will have in Uganda. Elephant number well over a thousand across the park, Uganda kob run into five figures, and the lion population sits at roughly 150 to 200 animals across fifteen to twenty prides. Rothschild’s giraffe are the species that makes this park distinctive, once close to extinction and now recovered to well over a thousand here. Back for lunch, then the afternoon on the Nile. The launch cruise runs upstream from Paraa for about three hours there and back, past hippo pods and very large crocodiles, ending a hundred metres from the base of the falls where the spray reaches you. It has been running since the late 1950s.
Day 3
Top Of The Falls Hike And Return To Entebbe
The most efficient half day in the park, and it needs a small piece of planning to work. We put you on an early boat and ask to be dropped at the trail below the gorge rather than returned to Paraa, then our vehicle collects you at the top. The hike climbs the gorge side for about 45 minutes to an hour on a marked path that gets slippery in the spray, so wear the boots you have been using. At the Fajao viewpoint you stand directly above the cleft, watching the whole river force itself through a gap barely seven metres wide before dropping 43 metres. The noise carries a long way through the bush. Afterwards we start the drive south, calling in at Ziwa again for anyone who missed the rhinos, and reaching Entebbe or Kampala in the evening. For travellers short on time we can fly you out from Pakuba or Bugungu airstrip instead, which turns the day into a morning.
Send them the itinerary before you decide. Everything on this page prints on to a few clean pages with the photographs and the day notes intact.
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What is and is not included
Included
- Murchison Falls National Park entry fees for the duration of your stay
- Rhino tracking on foot at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary
- Nile launch cruise to the base of the falls
- Guided hike to the top of the falls with a park ranger
- All game drives shown, including the Buligi circuit and Paraa ferry crossings
- All road transfers in our 4×4 safari vehicle with a pop up roof and a driver guide
- Airport pickup and drop off at Entebbe International Airport
- Two nights accommodation in or beside the park at your chosen tier
- Meals as shown in the itinerary and drinking water in the vehicle
- All government taxes and levies on the above
Not included
- International flights to and from Entebbe
- Ugandan visa or East Africa Tourist Visa
- Travel insurance
- Optional domestic flights to Pakuba, Chobe or Bugungu airstrip
- Nile delta boat cruise for the shoebill, bookable on request
- Chimpanzee trekking at Budongo Forest, quoted separately
- Hot air balloon safari and sport fishing on the Nile
- Tips for our guide, rangers and lodge staff
- Drinks, laundry and personal items
- Anything not listed under What’s Included
Before you book
Why Would You Want To Do This Safari?
Because Murchison gives you more wildlife per day than anywhere else in Uganda and a waterfall that nothing prepares you for. Wildlife numbers here are the highest of any Ugandan park, with 76 mammal species and over 450 birds recorded, and the Buligi plains north of the river are open enough that a dawn drive delivers herds rather than glimpses. The falls themselves are the other half. Standing above a river that has already run more than a thousand kilometres from Lake Victoria, watching it forced into a gap you could almost jump across, is a different sort of spectacle from a game drive. Ziwa is the practical bonus: rhino were shot out of Uganda completely and this is the only place they can be seen, tracked on foot rather than from a vehicle, which completes the Big Five for anyone doing the Ugandan circuit. Three days is enough to do all three properly if the boat and the hike are sequenced correctly, which is what we do.
Is This 3 Day Uganda Safari Enough?
For Murchison itself, yes, provided you accept two long drives. Two nights covers the launch cruise, a full Buligi morning and the top of the falls, which is the complete headline set. What suffers is the delta. The stretch downstream from Paraa towards Lake Albert is the best shoebill water in Uganda and it takes a separate three hour cruise, so anyone with birds in mind should add a day. Budongo Forest chimpanzee trekking and the Royal Mile, one of the most celebrated birding tracks in Africa, sit on the southern access road and are similarly worth a fourth day. If the driving is the sticking point rather than the time, we can fly you in and out from Entebbe in around ninety minutes each way, which makes a two night stay feel considerably longer. Murchison also pairs naturally with Kibale and Queen Elizabeth on a longer western loop, which is how most travellers who want both savannah and primates end up building their Ugandan itinerary. Tell us which of the two matters more and we will weight the days accordingly.
How Much Will This Safari Cost?
Park entry, the launch cruise and the Ziwa tracking fee are set rates and the same wherever you book. What moves the total is where you sleep, how many are sharing the vehicle, and whether you drive or fly. Accommodation at Murchison runs from campsites and community bandas through mid range lodges to high end camps on both banks of the Nile, and staying north of the ferry saves you a crossing before a dawn game drive, which is worth paying a little for. A vehicle and driver guide split between four costs each of you far less than between two. Domestic flights to the park airstrips are the biggest optional line and the one that transforms a short trip. Balloon safaris, the delta cruise and Budongo chimpanzee permits are quoted on request. Send our team your dates and numbers for a firm quote.