Under canvas on the Nile
Camping in Murchison Falls National Park
Camping at Murchison splits two ways: cheap and sociable at Red Chilli Rest Camp on the south bank, or basic and quiet at UWA's own sites at North Paraa and the Top of the Falls. Both put you close enough to the river to hear hippos after dark, and neither costs anything like a room in one of the lodges around them.
If you only want the answer
You have two real routes into camping here. Red Chilli Rest Camp, a private concession on the south bank at Paraa, charges from $8 per person for a basic pitch with shared ablutions, a bar and filtered drinking water, rising to $10 from 1 January 2027. UWA's own sites at North Paraa and the Top of the Falls run on the national tariff: $40 per person for a wilderness site, $30 for a private site booked ahead, or UGX 40,000 at a public site with a latrine and shelter, plus a UGX 25,000 dormitory bed if you would rather not pitch a tent at all. Book UWA camping on 0706 780 008 or through reservations@wildlife.go.ug, book Red Chilli directly by email, and pay before you arrive: UWA suspended its seven-day reservation hold on 1 March 2026, so a booking is only secured once it is paid in full. The Nile crossing at Paraa is a bridge now, not a ferry, so there is no crossing timetable to plan a campsite around, only the park's gate hours and the hippos that walk through camp after dark.
The two ways to camp here
Murchison does not offer the five-tier menu you find at some parks. What actually exists is a private concession campsite on the south bank and a set of UWA-run sites on the north, and the real difference between them is the difference between a sociable backpacker camp and a bare, self-sufficient pitch.
Red Chilli Rest Camp sits 500 metres from the boat jetty at Paraa, on a UWA concession the operator has held since 2002. Camping there gets you a shared ablution block, a generator running part of the day, a big thatched bar with a free filtered drinking water dispenser, and other travellers around you, all for a fraction of what a bed costs almost anywhere else inside the park. There is no wifi, deliberately, and hippos and baboons move through the grounds, which the camp's own photographs show rather than hide.
UWA's own camping sits at North Paraa, next to a 60-bed students' dormitory, and at the Top of the Falls itself. It is self-catering in the plainest sense: a public site gives you a pit latrine, water, firewood, a fireplace, a shelter and security, and that is the full list. Unlike some other Ugandan reserves, UWA does not publish individually named bush campsites for Murchison, so if you want the Top of the Falls pitch specifically, say so when you book rather than assuming it is guaranteed.
| Option | Rate | What you actually get |
|---|---|---|
| Red Chilli, private camping | $8 pp, rising to $10 from 1 Jan 2027 | Shared ablutions, generator power part of the day, bar, filtered water |
| UWA Category A, wilderness site | $40 pp, max 16 | Advance booking required; no facilities stated beyond the site itself |
| UWA Category B, private site | $30 pp, max 20 | Booked in advance; the headcount includes non-paying staff |
| UWA Category C, public site | UGX 40,000 pp | Pit latrine, water, firewood, fireplace, shelter, security |
| UWA dormitory bed, not a tent | UGX 25,000 adult | 60-bed students' centre at North Paraa; children UGX 10,000 |
UWA's tariff prices the public campsite only in Uganda shillings, so what a foreign visitor actually owes there is genuinely undefined in the document. Confirm it by email before you arrive rather than guessing at a conversion. Camping fees are also charged on top of park entry, $45 per person per 24 hours for a foreign non-resident, and on top of the vehicle fee, not instead of either.
The vehicle fee quirk that favours Red Chilli
UWA charges vehicle entry per 24 hours for almost everyone, with one exception: concessionaire visitor vehicles pay once per trip rather than once per day. A lodge inside the park boundary holds that kind of concession, and on the same logic, so does Red Chilli, which has run its south-bank site under a UWA concession since 2002. If that reading holds, a vehicle camping at Red Chilli for three nights should pay the vehicle fee once, not three times, the same as a guest at Paraa Safari Lodge next door. UWA's tariff does not spell out camping concessions by name, so confirm this explicitly when you book rather than assuming it. Camp at one of UWA's own sites instead and there is no such concession, so the vehicle fee is charged for every day you are inside.
How UWA camping booking actually works in 2026
There is no working online booking portal for this. We checked UWA's own Murchison park page directly on 13 September 2026 and found the same contact block that has been there for a while: a toll-free line, an email address and an office number, with no reservation form and no calendar behind any of it. Anyone telling you to book a UWA campsite online is describing a system that does not exist yet.
- 1. Decide which UWA category you want, wilderness, private or public, or whether a dormitory bed suits you better than a tent.
- 2. Call 0706 780 008 for camping and dormitory bookings specifically, or email reservations@wildlife.go.ug, or use the toll-free line 0800 100 960 or +256 414 355000 for general UWA reservations.
- 3. Confirm the total, including whether it already covers park entry and the vehicle fee, since neither is included by default and UWA's own paperwork does not standardise this answer.
- 4. Pay in full before you travel. Since 1 March 2026 the old seven-day reservation window has been suspended, so a site is only secured once it is paid for, not once it is merely requested. Payment runs through MTN MoMo Pay, Airtel Money Pay, a card machine, or bank transfer; cash in foreign currency is no longer listed as an accepted method.
- 5. Bring your confirmation offline, printed or saved to your phone. Signal is unreliable well before the gate.
Red Chilli books separately and more simply: email reservations@redchillihideaway.com with your dates and party size, since it is not part of UWA's reservation system even though it sits on UWA land.
The email, ready to copy
For a UWA site, this covers everything the reservations office needs in one message:
“Hello, I would like to book camping at Murchison Falls National Park. Category: [wilderness / private / public / dormitory]. Preferred site: [North Paraa / Top of the Falls / no preference]. Dates: [arrival] to [departure], [x] nights. Party: [x] adults, [x] children with ages. Vehicle: [type, e.g. Land Cruiser, foreign or Ugandan registered]. Please confirm the total including park entry, the vehicle fee, and whether it is charged per day or once per trip, and how you would like it paid.”
For Red Chilli, the message is shorter: your dates, party size, whether you are camping in your own tent or hiring one of theirs, and your vehicle type, since that decides how transport gets quoted if you need it.
The bridge replaced the ferry, and campers no longer plan around a crossing
Older advice about camping at Murchison talks about timing your arrival around the vehicle ferry at Paraa. That ferry stopped running once the 525 metre Paraa Bridge opened to public traffic in early 2022, confirmed by UWA itself that February. If you are camping on the north bank, at North Paraa, you now drive straight across rather than queuing for a sailing, and the only fixed constraints left are the gate hours, 07:00 to 19:00, and the 40 km/h speed limit inside the park.
One thread we could not fully close: a 2022 newspaper report mentioned two retired ferries kept near the bridge to help pedestrians cross, and nothing published since says whether a foot shuttle still runs. If you are arriving without a vehicle, do not plan on that; hire transport for the crossing rather than assuming a walk-on option exists.
Hippo and baboon discipline
Both camping options put you close enough to the river that hippos are a nightly presence rather than a rumour. Red Chilli's own account of its camp describes hippos grazing through the grounds after dark, and its photographs show baboons sitting around the site in daylight. Neither is unusual for a riverside camp in this part of Africa, and neither should keep you from booking, but the discipline around it is not optional.
- Zip your tent fully at night, every time, even for five minutes
- Never walk between a hippo and the water; if one is between you and the river, wait it out
- Use a torch and check the ground before you step outside after dark
- Lock food away in a vehicle or a sealed box rather than leaving it on a table or in an open tent
- Never feed a baboon or a monkey, and keep tent flaps closed whenever you are not in camp
Which option suits you
First time in the park, or camping in big-game country for the first time: Red Chilli is the sensible choice. You get ablutions, other people around you, a bar, filtered water and staff who deal with this every night, five hundred metres from the jetty where the launch trips leave, and Masindi's shops and fuel about an hour and a half beyond the gate.
Equipped and self-sufficient, with your own 4x4, a full water supply and the patience to confirm every detail by phone rather than online: a UWA wilderness site or a pitch at the Top of the Falls gives you a much quieter version of the park, at roughly the same cost as Red Chilli once park entry is added. Bring everything, because a public or wilderness site's full inventory really is a latrine and a firepit.
The rules that catch people
- Gate hours are 07:00 to 19:00, and your entry ticket runs for 24 hours from the moment you drive in, not until closing time
- Off-track driving costs $150 per person in the vehicle, charged to the driver; hitting an animal costs $500
- Night driving is not allowed except on a guided night game drive, sold only to guests sleeping inside the park
- Motorcycles are banned from the park outright
- Payment is effectively cashless: mobile money, card or bank transfer, not foreign currency cash
- Keep every receipt until you leave; rangers check them, and defaulting on the tariff carries its own charge