Uganda's most beautiful town — Rwenzori foothills, crater lakes, chimpanzee forest, and the best matoke in western Uganda
Fort Portal is the largest town in western Uganda — 300km from Kampala, at 1,520m in the foothills of the Rwenzori Mountains (the 'Mountains of the Moon', the highest range in Africa outside Kilimanjaro and Kenya), surrounded by crater lakes, tea plantations, chimpanzee forest, and the nearest town to Kibale National Park (the world's highest density of primate species, including the largest habituated chimpanzee population in Africa). The town itself — compact, pleasant, the main commercial centre of the Tooro Kingdom — has a completely different character from Kampala: cooler, quieter, with…
Fort Portal was established as a British colonial administrative post in 1891 and named after Sir Gerald Portal, the British Special Commissioner for Uganda who died of illness shortly after the expedition that passed through. The town became the administrative capital of the colonial Toro Kingdom district — the Tooro Kingdom (one of the four traditional kingdoms of Uganda) has its capital here. Kibale National Park — the primary reason most visitors come to Fort Portal — was gazetted as a forest reserve in 1932 and upgraded to national park in 1993; the chimpanzee habituation programme began…