Travel Guide Fort Portal

Fort Portal, 290 kilometers west of Kampala and 75 kilometers north of Kasese, in a tea-growing region with beautiful views of the Rwenzori icefields on a clear day, is certainly one of the most pleasant towns in Uganda. Over the last 20 years (1990's and 2000's), it has undergone an extensive renovation program including road repairs and the development of new hotels and restaurants. The city takes its name from a British fortress built in the early 1890s on the site of the present golf club to protect the Toro kingdom from attackers from Bunyoro, and from Sir Gerald Portal, an English diplomat who came to lay the foundation for the protectorate that was officially proclaimed a few months after his death in 1894. A statue honors the memory of this dignitary from across the Channel in the city center. The city is home to the Palace of the King of Toro, a round building perched on a hill, which is a reconstruction of the old palace destroyed in the second half of the 1960s by Obote, and rebuilt with money from former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. A garden city of some sixty thousand souls, Fort Portal is the gateway to the Kibale Forest, the Crater Lakes region - ideal for ecotourism - and the northern slopes of the Rwenzori massif, but it is worth spending a day or two here to wander around and soak up its urban atmosphere.