Pabidi Lodge
Luxury tented camp in forest · Kaniyo Pabidi forest in Budongo, about 20 minutes in from the southern gate · Great Lakes Safaris
A drawing, because nobody has sent us a photograph of Pabidi Lodge yet. Send five and this page changes the same week.
High-end
Outside the gate
Safari company
The only place to sleep inside the forest itself, which matters because chimpanzee tracking at Kaniyo Pabidi begins early and the drive up from Masindi eats an hour. Great Lakes Safaris opened it in the same patch of Budongo as the old eco lodge it replaces, and built it as a tented camp rather than a row of cabins. Birders come for the restricted-range species in these trees as much as for the chimpanzees, and the savanna gates are twenty minutes further on.
Why you'd pick it
- The only beds in the forest where the chimpanzees are tracked
- Successor to Budongo Eco Lodge, which has closed
- Rare forest birds including chocolate-backed kingfisher on site
What's here
Arranged from the lodge:
- Boat trips
Read from Pabidi Lodge'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
On request. No rate card is published. Enquire through Great Lakes Safaris. The chimpanzee permit is a separate purchase and is not a UWA product: Kaniyo Pabidi sits in a National Forestry Authority reserve and the tracking is sold by a private concessionaire at $120 to $130 for foreign non-residents.
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.