Murchison Falls National Park is Uganda’s largest national park estimated size to be 3893sq km. This is all together with Bugungu wildlife reserve (748sq km) and Karuma wildlife reserve (720sq km). The park is bisected by the Victoria Nile from east to west for a distance of about 115km with the waters flowing through a narrow gorge about 7meters wide and 43meters deep creating the world’s most powerful water falls where the park gets its name from. This is where the Nile explodes through a narrow gorge and cascades down to become a placid river whose banks are thronged with hippos and crocodiles, waterbucks and buffaloes. The vegetation is characterized by savannah, riverine forest and woodland. Wildlife includes lions, leopards, elephants, giraffes, hartebeests, oribis, Uganda kobs, chimpanzees, and many bird species.
The Murchison National Park is suited in the northern part of Albertine Rift Valley. A place where the massive Bunyoro escarpment amalgamate into the enormous plains of Acholi land. It’s well known to be one of Uganda’s ancient conservation areas. The park having been visited by Samuel and Florence Baker in 1863-1864, named the falls in it, Murchison Falls after the geologist Roderick Murchison then the president of Royal Geographical Society. In 1926, it was known as a game reserve set up to protect the savannah grassland that was talked about by Winston Church Hill in 1907 as the great Kew Gardens along with the wildlife blended on an restricted land.
The park is acknowledged for receiving prominent international visitors. Winston Churchill is a great man who is accredited for having done activities such as boat cruise, hiking as well as cycling the Nile corridor of the falls. Later, he was followed by his predecessor who is believed for have spent a lot of money US$1.8m on his hunting safari in Uganda. Activities in the park include chimpanzee trekking, game drives, boat cruise to the bottom of the falls, hike to the top of the falls.
