Masindi Hotel
Historic country hotel · Masindi town, 21 km from Kichumbanyobo gate · Masindi Hotel
A drawing, because nobody has sent us a photograph of Masindi Hotel yet. Send five and this page changes the same week.
Budget
Outside the gate
Locally owned
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 gardens at the edge of Masindi. It is a National Heritage Site. Hemingway recovered here 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; the wings still carry those names. 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 arranged for dawn starts.
Why you'd pick it
- Uganda's oldest hotel, built by East African Railways and Harbours in 1923
- A National Heritage Site, and the history tour comes with the room
- Solar-powered since 2024, in six and a half acres of garden
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.
- Park entryCharged per 24 hours, and this is the only park in Uganda's top A+ band.
- $45per person, per day
- VehicleA Ugandan-registered 4x4, the usual hire car, at UGX 40,000 including Murchison's own surcharge; bring a foreign-registered one and it is $160.
- $11per vehicle, per day
Three nights means three days inside, so two adults sharing one vehicle pay $303 in park fees before anyone pays for a bed.
The full fee schedule for Murchison Falls National ParkRates
From $50 per room, B&B. Published on their own site, all bed and breakfast: the quiet garden rooms $50 to $85, the garden rooms $85 to $105, the historic rooms $95 to $105, and the Hemingway wing and the cottage $115. Camping is $7 a head and a driver or guide sleeps for UGX 30,000. Every rate includes breakfast, water, wifi and a tour of the hotel's history.
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 Anyundwe House and Papa's Camp at the Bugungu airstrip, which is decent evidence that both exist, but neither publishes anything we were able to check.