Queen Elizabeth National Park

The three areas and how to split your time

Mweya and the Kasenyi plains in the north are the core: the Kazinga Channel launch leaves from Mweya, and Kasenyi is where the Uganda kob gather and where the lions that hunt them are found. Two nights covers it comfortably. Ishasha, in the far south, is a two-hour drive from Mweya and is a different landscape of open acacia and fig trees, famous for lions that lie along the horizontal branches. It also sits directly on the road to Bwindi, so it fits into a gorilla itinerary at almost no cost in driving time. Kyambura Gorge, on the eastern edge, is a fifty-metre-deep forested cut in the savannah holding a small, habituated chimpanzee community.

Fees and permits

Park entry for a foreign non-resident is around 40 US dollars per person per 24 hours, set by the Uganda Wildlife Authority. The Kazinga Channel launch is charged separately, at roughly 30 US dollars per person on the shared boat. Chimpanzee tracking in Kyambura Gorge is about 50 US dollars per person. All three are indicative, are set by the authority and change without much notice, so treat them as a planning guide rather than a quote.

Be realistic about Kyambura. The community is small, it is not fully habituated, and the chance of a sighting is well below what Kibale delivers. The gorge walk itself is superb regardless. If seeing chimpanzees is the point of the day, do it in Kibale.

The tree-climbing lions

Ishasha’s lions climb, and the usual explanation is that they are escaping biting flies and ground heat, though nobody has settled it. They are not guaranteed. Finding them means driving the fig trees along the northern and southern circuits in the early morning or late afternoon and having a guide who knows which individual trees the pride has been using that week. A first-time visitor driving themselves will usually miss them.

Craters, salt and the Rwenzoris

The Katwe explosion craters north of Mweya are worth a slow morning, both for the view down into them and for the salt pans at Lake Katwe, where salt has been cut by hand since long before the park existed. The extraction is hard, unglamorous work, and a visit run through the local cooperative is far more interesting than the drive-past most itineraries give it. On a clear morning, usually after rain, the Rwenzori peaks appear on the northern skyline. They are snow-capped, on the equator, and most visitors never see them because of cloud.

A working landscape

Fishing villages sit inside the park boundary at Katwe, Kasenyi and Kahendero, and the road passes through them. Elephants raid gardens, lions take cattle, and the compensation and fencing schemes are underfunded. This is a park where the conservation conversation is visibly unfinished, and it is more honest to see that than to be driven around it.