Practical questions
Queen Elizabeth National Park: frequently asked questions
The questions first-time visitors to Queen Elizabeth ask, answered plainly with the current official figures and with the source behind each.
What does it cost?
Foreign non-residents pay $40 per person per 24 hours, foreign residents $30, other African nationals $25 and East African citizens UGX 20,000. Children of 5 to 15 pay $20 or less and under-fives are free. Vehicles pay separately: a Ugandan-registered 4x4 costs UGX 30,000 a day, around $8, while a foreign-registered one costs $150. Put together, a standard day here works out at $48 in park fees, which is number 9 of the 31 parks on our fee index and cheaper than most of the continent's famous names. Activities are extra: the Kazinga Channel cruise is $30 per person and chimpanzee tracking in Kyambura Gorge is $100 with park entry excluded.
Does Ishasha cost extra?
No. One Category A ticket covers every sector of the park, and Ishasha appears nowhere in UWA's tariff as a separate line. Pay $40 at any gate and you are covered for the whole park for 24 hours. The trap in the south is the clock rather than the gate. A ticket runs 24 hours from the moment you pass the barrier, so the classic route of sleeping in the north and driving south through Ishasha towards Bwindi the next morning usually crosses that mark and costs a second day's entry. Do not confuse the sector with Kyambura Wildlife Reserve, a separate Category C reserve listed at $10, which is not the same thing as Kyambura Gorge inside this park.
How far is Ishasha from Mweya?
About 107 km of murram, and you should plan two and a half to three hours rather than the two that circulates everywhere, including on one camp's own website. The published lengths differ because they are measured from different points: the Ministry of Works and Transport calls the Katunguru to Ishasha corridor 87 km in its press notice of 14 August 2026 and a parliamentary notice gives 88 km, while a drive from Mweya adds about 20 km to get off the peninsula first, which is how the total lands between 105 and 110 km. The route runs back to the main road at Katunguru and then south along the eastern side of Lake Edward, and parts of it suffer in the rains, particularly around April. The practical consequence is that Ishasha is no day trip from Mweya: there and back is most of a day in the car, in a sector where the lions are worth watching early and late. Sleep in or near Ishasha, or take it as a stop on the way to or from Bwindi, which is roughly 26 km from Buhoma.
Can I drive the public road through the park for free?
Be careful with that claim. The Kasese to Mbarara road does run straight through the park and UWA's gates sit on the side roads rather than on the highway itself, but no UWA document says anything about transit traffic being exempt, and we could find no statement of policy either way. What UWA's own management plan does say is that the public road is a weakness of the park and that revenue is lost where gates are missing. So the road is public and unbarriered, and that is as far as the evidence goes. The moment you turn off the tarmac onto a game track you are buying a paid product: entry plus, if you drive yourself without a guide, the self-drive game-viewing fee of $10 per vehicle per day.
Can I self-drive here?
Yes, and the single most expensive mistake is bringing your own vehicle across a border. A foreign-registered 4x4 or tour vehicle pays $150 per 24 hours. The identical vehicle on Ugandan plates pays UGX 30,000, about $8, which is the same as a minibus. Over three days that is $450 against roughly $24, so anyone driving in from Kenya, Rwanda or Tanzania should expect their daily budget to roughly triple. Rent in Uganda. Beyond that, self-driving costs $10 per vehicle per day, the speed limit is 40 km/h, driving off the tracks costs $150 per person in the vehicle and is charged to the driver, and a UWA guide in your own car is $25 per guide rather than per person.
When should I come?
June and July, with January and February as the second window. This park has no truly dry month, which is the honest starting point: April is the wettest at 339 mm across eighteen wet days, and October brings a second wet peak. June averages 18 mm across a single wet day and July 24 mm, which is as dry as it gets. Temperatures barely move across the year, from a mean daily maximum of 26.8°C in April to 29.4°C in February, so you are choosing between mud and dust rather than between hot and cool. One extra reason to avoid March, April, May and November: three of Aerolink's four daily rotations to Kasese do not operate in those months.
Are the tree-climbing lions guaranteed?
No, and nobody honest will tell you otherwise. Monitoring by the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Uganda Carnivore Program and UWA put the Ishasha lion population at 20 to 30 individuals in 2022 and described the trend as relatively stable. That is a small population in a small, well-known area, with guides who know the individual fig trees, so a sighting is realistic. It is not a promise, and no official source publishes a success rate. Plan at least one night in or near Ishasha so you have both a morning and a late afternoon to look. Poisoning is the reason the population is where it is: UWA has recorded incidents in 2010, 2018, 2021 and again in December 2025, and in September 2026 it signed a ten-year co-management partnership with WCS aimed specifically at recovering the Ishasha lions.
Is the tariff still valid?
Formally, no. The booklet every figure on this site comes from is the Conservation Tariff July 2024 to June 2026, and it expired on 30 June 2026. On 18 September 2026 it was still the only full rate card on UWA's own rates page, no successor for July 2026 to June 2028 had been published, and UWA's news page carried no announcement of new rates. The one newer document, a letter signed by the Executive Director on 26 February 2026, raises several activity prices only from 1 January 2027, which implies the expired figures continue in the meantime. Treat every amount as the last rate UWA put in print and confirm the total before you pay.
What does the Kazinga Channel cruise cost, and how do I book it?
UWA's launch cruise is $30 per person for foreign non-residents, $25 for residents, $20 for other African nationals and UGX 30,000 for East African citizens. It runs about two hours from the marina on the Mweya peninsula, between Mweya and the point where the channel enters Lake Edward, with a maximum of 40 passengers. UWA publishes no departure times anywhere, so ask at the Visitor Information Centre on Mweya or when you book. Mweya Safari Lodge runs its own boats on the same water and publishes neither price nor timetable. One unresolved point: the tariff's minimum charge of $120 for a small boat names Murchison Falls and Lake Mburo without mentioning Queen Elizabeth, so whether a private charter here carries that minimum is genuinely unclear.
How do I pay, and can I hold a booking?
Assume the gate is cashless and assume nothing is held for you. The tariff's payment section lists mobile money through MTN MoMo Pay and Airtel Money Pay, POS card machines, bank transfer and an online portal, with no mention of cash in any currency, even though UWA's own park brochure still says you can pay in shillings, dollars, pounds, euros or by Visa. The tariff is the newer document, so carry a working card and a funded mobile money line. Since 1 March 2026 the seven-day reservation window has been suspended, so a booking only exists once it is paid in full. Chimpanzee permits for foreign non-residents can only be bought through a licensed tour operator; everything else can be settled at the reservations office or the gates. The UWA payment portal refused connections when we checked on 18 September 2026, so use reservations@wildlife.go.ug or 0800 100 960 rather than counting on paying online.