Masindi Hotel

Built in 1923 by East African Railways and Harbours for travellers heading north to the falls, the Congo and Sudan, and still standing in its own six and a half acres at the edge of Masindi. It is a National Heritage Site. Hemingway recovered in room 8 after surviving two plane crashes in 1954, and Hepburn had room 3 and Bogart room 5 while The African Queen was being made. It is plain rather than smart, and the point is the position: twenty-one kilometres from the Kichumbanyobo gate, with early breakfasts and packed lunches for dawn starts. The hotel runs no safari vehicles of its own.

Pros and cons

What's here

• Wi-Fi
• Restaurant
• Bar
• Campsite
• Solar or 24h power

Arranged from the lodge:

• Game drives
• Boat trips
• Birding

Read from Masindi Hotel's own website in July 2026. Anything not listed we could not confirm, which is not the same as it being absent.

What the park charges on top

The rate above buys you a bed. Murchison Falls National Park charges its own entry fee for every day you are inside. Here is what that adds up to.

Rates at Masindi Hotel

From $50 per room, B&B. From their own 2026 rate card, all per room per night bed and breakfast: Kitara Deluxe singles in the Explorer block $50, Baker Deluxe doubles and twins $85, the African Queen doubles and twins $95 and the triple $105, the Hemingway room and the Cottage $115, and the two-bedroom Family House $135. Camping is $7 a head and a driver or guide sleeps for UGX 30,000.

The wings are not just names. The African Queen rooms are the original 1923 build: high ceilings, thick walls, veranda doors onto the garden, with Hepburn's room 3 and Bogart's room 5 among them. Room 8, the Hemingway, is the largest in the hotel and the only one with an ensuite bath and a separate toilet. The Baker rooms run from the bar down past the Explorer block, compact and the best value in the house, which is why safari crews end up there, and 14 and 15 adjoin into a family room. The Kitara singles are small, quiet and functional. The five Birders rooms look straight into the trees. The Family House converts to fourteen bunks, but only for a group taking all fourteen.

What the rate covers is not confirmed. We do not know yet whether meals, drinks and activities are included, so read this as the bed only.

Every figure on this page is in US dollars.

Rates were read in July 2026 from each property's own website, rate-card PDF or published government tariff. A lodge that publishes nothing says On request, and any figure that came from somewhere other than the property is labelled. Park fees are extra almost everywhere: $45 per person per 24 hours for foreign non-residents, plus a vehicle fee that carries a surcharge unique to Murchison. Deliberately left out, so you know why you cannot find them here. Baker's Lodge is closed, with a flood notice still standing on its operator's site, and Murchison Bush Camp has taken its place in that portfolio. Budongo Eco Lodge is closed too, confirmed by Great Lakes Safaris, which now runs Pabidi Lodge in the same forest. Geo Lodges no longer has any Murchison property despite older guides saying otherwise. Yebo Safari Camp near Mubako gate, Kabalega Wilderness Lodge and Shoebill Camp Site appear across the directories but have no website of their own that we could reach, so we cannot confirm their rates, their capacity or that they are still trading. Amuka Safari Lodge is filed under Murchison by many sites and is not here, because it sits at Nakasongola on the Kampala road roughly two hours short of the park. Aerolink's 2026 route network also names Anyadwe House and Papa's Camp at the Bugungu airstrip. Anyadwe House turns out to publish its own site, a small high-end guesthouse on the south bank of the Nile beside the park, spotted thanks to a reader correction; Papa's Camp still publishes nothing we were able to check.

Official website ↗

Questions about Masindi Hotel