The Masindi Hotel will be Celebrating 100 Years in 2023!
Images of the hotel by Nahida Beghani

As such, this is going to be an appreciation and a history rather than a review in the true tradition of The Eye magazine. In deference to long-time readers of the magazine, I have, however, shoehorned it into the familiar format that you all know and love, complete with anonymous partner and facial scrub.

220km northwest of Kampala, Masindi town is ideally placed for an overnight break on the way to Murchison Falls National Park.  The road is good tarmac and from the edge of Kampala, the drive takes about 3.5 hours though my partner (weekend hottie, middle-aged spouse or same-sex chum; you choose) grumbled about the slow traffic as far as Luwero. We located the hotel without difficulty and parked the E-type outside a long, colonial-style veranda. On disembarking, we were greeted by a friendly and welcoming receptionist who, assuming a fascination with local history, told us that the hotel had been built in 1923 and was approaching its centenary. As she drew breath to continue, my partner quickly instructed another friendly staff member to provide directions towards a large glass of the house red. I would have loved to adjourn to the spa for a massage and coffee-bean facial scrub, but I was indeed interested to learn more about the hotel.

Some History about the Masindi Hotel

I soon learned from my chatty informant that the Masindi Hotel started life as the Railway Hotel, intended as an overnight stop for railway passengers travelling between Jinja and a new port on Lake Albert at Butiaba. From there, steamships departed for Congo and Sudan, this being in the days when travellers might feasibly wish to go to either place. Unfortunately, though proposed by Winston Churchill in his My African Journey, the required railway never materialised. Instead, passengers travelled up the Nile Valley from Jinja by train and paddle-steamer to Masindi Port where they were driven overland to Butiaba via Masindi.

Nothing daunted, the Railway Hotel accommodated road travellers instead. So as not to offer false promises to train-spotters (a niche now filled by birdwatchers bound for Budongo Forest), it was renamed the Masindi Hotel in 1948, an inspired rebranding that ushered in a glorious heyday. So popular was the hotel during the ‘50s – with travellers, tourists visiting the newly-created Murchison Falls National Park, and golfers playing the town’s fine 18-hole course – that guests needed to book up to a year in advance.

By this time, I had subsided onto an adjacent sofa where I called on an alert waiter to bring a cup of herbal tea. Thus revived, I heard how, over the years, hotel staff have had ample opportunity for name-dropping. Writers, royals, politicians and film stars have all passed through, starting with David, Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) in 1928. Sadly for hotel folklore, he found no cause to delay in Masindi and the playboy-prince (who had bedded Beryl Markham and Lady ‘Toodles’ Furness in Kenya and would soon seduce the wife of the Dodoma D.C. in Tanzania) continued to Murchison Falls without a whiff of scandal.

Nor was a 1948 visit by Elspeth Huxley, of The Flame Trees of Thika fame, anything but respectable. There was more fun in 1951, however, when movie director John Huston arrived with Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Katherine Hepburn; Butiaba-bound to shoot The African Queen. The bar in the Masindi Hotel was a last chance saloon for a crew who would soon be contending with dysentery, tropical storms and black mambas down in the rift valley; inconveniences that Bogey countered with more whisky. Also on the crew was a young boom-operator, Kevin McClory, who would later write scripts for James Bond films – which leads neatly to the arrival of another celebrity, shaken and stirred, in Masindi, three years later. Ernest Hemingway’s sorry condition was due to two plane crashes in as many days, the first at Murchison Falls; the second during take off from Butiaba. He was not, however, unconscious and John Mills, the Murchison game warden, was able to report that ‘That evening, the gin stock at the Masindi Hotel was seriously depleted’.

The hotel being an obligatory stop on the way to Murchison Falls, we might imagine Britain’s Queen Mother popping in for lunch on her way to Paraa in 1959. We can point with more certainty at royal visits by the kings of Buganda, Bunyoro and Toro before their kingdoms were abolished by President Obote in 1967. In the dark years that followed, as international tourism stalled, high-profile visits were presumably limited to Obote, Amin and their cronies.

By 1986, when Uganda turned the corner, the Masindi Hotel, now government-run, was in a sorry state after years of neglect. Though tourists started to trickle back, it was clearly nothing to write home about Unearthing a battered copy of the first Bradt Guide to Uganda (1994) in the hotel library, I found writer Philip Briggs glossing over the Masindi Hotel’s latent charms in favour of the Softie Guesthouse which was ‘clean and friendly and has a bar with a fridge!’ Python-turned-peregrinator Michael Palin was no more enthusiastic in 1999, enduring ‘a narrow bed with no mosquito net, lots of mosquitoes, bare bulbs and dodgy wiring.’

In 2000, the hotel was privatised and since then, under the careful eye of the Bhegani family, it has reclaimed its former glory. Hot water is no longer brought to the bathrooms in jerrycans but, once again, spouts obligingly from faucets. Encouraged by this quantum leap, my partner withdrew into a cloud of steam for the next hour, far longer than was necessary, I thought, to transfer the branded toiletries into a washbag! Thus freshened, we relocated to the Kabalega Restaurant where, in remembrance of the great man’s misadventures, I chose a Hemingway Steak. This arrived burnt and bloody on the outside and was very tender in the middle, which I thought very appropriate. Meanwhile, my partner washed down an Elspeth Huxley Rice Pudding and Railway Salad with more of the Chateau Masindi, which is apparently cheaper by the box. The chef himself came out to ask how we were enjoying our food, which my partner thought a considerate touch; myself, I suspected no one had ever ordered the Elspeth Huxley Rice Pudding before and he was merely curious.

Needless to say, our choices were delicious, enhanced by the delightful setting for, at 99 years of age, Uganda’s oldest hotel wears her age and character with pride. This has not always been the case; long-term residents will recall an Eighties makeover that attempted to resolve a post-Amin mid-life crisis with a zebra-stripe paintjob in the bar-restaurant. Of this, happily, there are no traces. Nor, incidentally, is there any sign of the Softie Guesthouse or its fridge, both of which have long disappeared from Bradt Uganda. The Masindi Hotel, on the other hand, having come full circle, is justly celebrated in the 2019 edition, its ‘long verandas, airy, tiled en-suite rooms and revamped public areas once again exuding the charm of its salad days.’

Celebrity visits are also ongoing. As the young staff member who escorted us back to our room informed us proudly, Jidenna, whoever he or she is, stayed there in 2019!

As my partner and I drifted towards sleep, I wondered whether any of those famous names had stayed in our room. A bloodied writer, a whisky-soaked actor, a king-in-waiting, a mosquito-bitten comedian…? Perhaps Jidenna? I googled the name on my phone (my partner grumbled at the glow) to find he is a 37-year old Nigerian-American rapper which provides me with the first of two concluding points.

Firstly, don’t tell me you’ve learnt nothing from this article (he’s 183cm tall and is famous for the songs Classic Man and Yoga) and secondly, do be sure to go and help the Masindi Hotel celebrate its big birthday year.