Queen Elizabeth National Park

Fantastic wildlife experience in an overly complicated park

Queen Elisabeth National Park is one of the most popular safari destinations in Uganda, but still you can go there and have the feeling you were one of the very few people around. The park offers many activities, from Jeep safaris to bird watching and chimp tracking. I started my day in QE with the latter, but days before actually getting there, I had to go through an overly complicated process of bureaucratic steps, arrangements and phone calls to make my reservations. It was almost as if they just made things as difficult as possible, so that you would just get so frustrated that you'd simply book an all inclusive arrangement at a tourism agency. Which, as a simple budget backpacker, I obviously didn't want.

This continued as I arrived at the chimp tracking site on a motor taxi. As it turned out, my reservation hadn't come through at all. Luckily I was able to take somebody else's place. Then there was the problem of my transport. I didn't have my own car, even though that's usually a requirement for the Chimp tracking safari, since the tour guide has to bring us to a yet to be defined location in the park (and of course the company doesn't have its own transportation). Unfortunately none of the at least six people I spoke to over the phone to try and make a reservation, had the courtesy of telling me this. Again luckily, I was able to drive along with another tourist who did have his own car.

The Chimp tracking safari itself turned out to be amazing. Our tour guide, Stephanie, lead us through a lush piece of rainforest in the beautiful Kyambura gorge, sharing all sorts of information with us about the things we stumbled upon. The site wasn't the ideal place in Uganda to do Chimp tracking (this is most likely Kibale Forest NP), and we were aware of the reasonable possibility of not finding any chimps at all. After a three hour walk uphill, downhill, through bushes and pools of mud in the middle of the jungle, our guide finally spotted several chimps in the distance. Before that, we had already seen a wide range of tropical birds, hippos, baboons, crocodiles, velvet monkeys and an elephant. Even without the chimps it would've been worth the $50. Our guide was an absolute genius and the scenery was beyond beautiful

Almost every other activity happens all the way on the other side of the park, which is about an hour and a half away by car from the chimp tracking site. In the meantime you drive through scenic pieces of savanna, where elephants play games with each other, gazelles graze freely and baboons block the road just to take the piss out of you. Passing the main gate, you arrive at the Mweya peninsula, where you can find a tourist information office, a gas station, a cute restaurant/bar and a wide range of hotels and hostels. I can't judge any of these accommodations as I haven't spent a night in any of them, but the general opinion seems to be that they are remarkably good and well priced for national park standards. The scenery around here is once again brilliant, as you're surrounded by beautiful nature on one side and the stunning lake Edward and the Kazinga channel on the other side.

At the end of the afternoon I went downhill to the shores of the channel, to do the Channel launch trip. This is being done in a standard type touring boat in groups of about 20 people. This was an absolutely amazing experience not many other moments during my time in Uganda can compete with. From the upper deck of the boat I was able to see loads of elephants, hippos, African buffalos, crocodiles, gazelles and monitor lizards on the shore of the channel, living in peace with each other and not caring the slightest bit about us tourists coming so close. Our tour guide was a slightly nervous, but funny man, who enthusiastically provided us with tons of information about literally everything that moved around us. Lastly, seeing the sun setting above the horizon over Lake Edward was a very nice bonus.

Going back wasn't as much a pain in the ass getting there, but only because the staff of the fancy Mweya Safari Lodge were so kind to help me getting a taxi and use their phone to call him, even though I wasn't even a guest of theirs. The taxi brought me to the village of Katunguru, near the main entrance next to the freeway, seperating one side of Queen Elisabeth from the other. From there I was able to take public transport back to civilization.

All in all, Queen Elisabeth National Park provides some of the best tourist attractions in the whole country, for better prices than your average safari in Kenya or Tanzania. It's a major hassle to get there, and dealing with all the complications and the bureaucracy isn't easy if you're on a tight budget, but there's no doubt it's very much worth it.