Fort Portal is an adventure city offering a wide range of activities from moderate day hiking plans around its scenic lakes, cultural and community based tours, birdwatching, cycling tours and more. Named Uganda’s tourism City, Fort Portal ranks as the most attractive destination within Uganda and the region known for its pleasant all-year-round climate, warm hospitality, lush landscape dotted with scenic crater lakes, extensive tea hill sides, tropical forests and banana plantations. Fort Portal’s serene and quiet environment, wide range of accommodations makes it a perfect base to explore Uganda’s premier attractions.
Attractions and Adventure Activities to do in and around Fort Portal
Tailored day-tours out of Fort Portal explores a variety of attractions and rewarding adventure activities that fit your available time, fitness levels and adventure appetite. And on our tours, these local attractions are included as options, allowing you the freedom to explore them at your convenience whenever time allows during the main tour. These short tours vary from 2 to 4 hours and even extending to Full-day activities.
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Explore the Crater Lakes on Day-Tours
Fort Portal’s landscape is poked with over 50 volcanic crater lakes that fall into two main clusters or volcanic crater fields lying with the radius of about 25 km apart, creating an amazing and inspiration landscape. Below is a breakdown of activities we explore on short-tours here;
Adventure Activities around the Fort Portal cluster of Crater Lakes
The northern cluster of crater lakes lie about 2 km north of town of Fort Portal offering various adventure activities ranging from half-a-day to 30 mins biking, hiking and nature walks along the tropical rainforest rimmed crater lakes and panoramic scenic views.
The most popular activity here is a guided nature walk that follows a scenic trail along a series of crater lakes bringing you to the mythical Amabere-ga-Nyina Mwiru caves with its small but lovely chilly waterfalls set within a small patch of tropical forests teaming with birds. The hiking trail is suitable for all fitness levels and offers excellent scenic views of the entire landscape including the towering Rwenzori mountain ranges on the western horizon.
Birdlife is excellent along the forested rims of the crater lakes where you can tick off various species notably the Great- Blue and ross’s Turaco that frequent guava farms.
Adventure Activities around the Ndali-Kasenda cluster of Crater Lakes
The Ndali-Kasenda cluster of crater lakes lie some 20km south of Fort Portal town along the escarpment wall of the rift valley. These scenic lakes differ both in character and form with some surrounded by tropical forests and some cultivation. The crater lakes’ stunningly scenic location and landscape has attracted top notch and excellent accommodation facilities ranging from luxury to mid-range and to community campsites making it a perfect base to explore local attractions like chimpanzee tracking at the nearby Kibale NP and places beyond.
Popular activities to do here include; community guided tours that offers various experiences from cultural tours, coffee and vanilla farm visits, school visits, guided walks, cooking classes and home visits among others.
Birdwatchers and naturalists can explore various tropical forest rims on most crater lakes to tick a quality selection of forest-proper bird species, butterflies and primates.
Adventures and hiking enthusiasts will enjoy a 4-6hr round moderate hike around the crater lakes where the trail takes you along forested rims teaming with primates, banana farms all the way to the scenic view point to grasp the beauty of the entire landscape. This moderate hiking trail includes the scenic Mahoma Waterfalls, up to 5 crater lakes and a couple of towering viewing points that offer an-all-round landscape views.
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Trek along the Chimpanzee in Kibale National Park
Fort Portal is perfect base to explore the primate’s capital of Kibale National Park known for its excellent trekking experience along the chimpanzee across its mid-altitude forest ranges. Kibale Forest is the primates capital with a high concentration of primates where some 13-species of primates occur including several the Chimpanzee. Trekking expereince here occurs daily on a two daily scheduled program where visitors on a trek get to spend an-hour observing this man’s closest relative in its native rainforest home.
Birdwatchers and naturalists seeking more time in nature, Kibale Forest is Uganda’s best birding hotspot known for its Guinea-congo restricted species and other excellent forest-proper species along with rare and butterflies. The forest maintains excellent birding trails that criss-cross varied attitudes and forest structures where daily nature walk activities and night walks are conducted.
The nearby Bigodi swamp is favorited by bird watchers to its varied riverine and swamp habitats that also host over 9 species of primates.
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Hiking or Biking tour to Explore the Crater Lakes
Fort Portal’s scenic volcanic crater lakes which dot its entire landscape are a major highlight and an attraction to most visitors here. Numbering over 50, these scenic and characterful crater lakes are divided into two clusters namely; the Fort portal cluster and the Ndali-Kasenda cluster offering excellent hiking and cycling expereince. Hiking or cycling experiences around these crater lakes follow small foot-trails that run through various villages and farm lands offering a true Uganda rural expereince.
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Hike the Rwenzori Mountains Ranges
Day trips out of Fort portal explore the Rwenzori Mountains ranges are the continents highest ranges towering some 5109m on Margherita peak. The tours to Rwenzori mountain ranges vary from Day-trips to multi-day organized hikes to the summit offering an ultimate and the most rewarding expereince.
Visitors with short time in Fort Portal can opt for day-trips that explore the low-key but scenic hikes on foothills of Rwenzori mountain ranges that offer views of the upper ranges and distant views of Lake Albert and the Semuliki Lowlands.
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Visit the Hot Springs at Semuliki NP
The hot springs set within the lowland forest of Semliki National Park is a major attraction to visit out of Fort Portal. The hot springs named male and female include a geyser that gushes boiling sulphur water up to 1.5m above surface while another is a wide boiling steam pool. The hot springs are connected with a scenic trail that includes a boardwalk section where a guided tour ca last up to 2-hrs. A guided tour expereince here includes a demonstrative activity where eggs and bananas are boiled in almost 100 degrees sulphur pools. The hot springs are an important cultural heritage site for the local Bambuti and Bamba that resides on the edges of Semuliki NP.
The Semuliki NP lies only some 45km (1hr drive) north-west of Fort Portal. The scenic drive through the escarpment and the Rwenzori Foothills is the best in the country offering panoramic views of the rwenzoris and distant views of Semliki Valley and lake Albert.
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Go Birding for the Semuliki Lowland Forest Species
Semliki National Park is Uganda’s top birding hotspot known for its quality of habitat-restricted species typical of Congo lowland forests on an easterly limit here. Visiting birders will be excited to tick-off the rich-checklist of a typical Guinea-Congo species and a quality of rare checklist of low-land forest restricted bird species on their range-limit here. Excellent birding trails traverse this lowland past various ox-bow lakes, steam-filled swamps to tick off these rarities. Check out our specialised birding tours that explores this bird-rich forest here.
Attractions Far and Beyond Fort Portal
Fort Portal lies at the heart of Uganda’s premier tourist attractions making it a perfect base to explore them. The towering Rwenzori mountain ranges lie on its the west, the lowland forests of Semuliki National Park with its captivating hot springs and out-of-range lowland forest birds in the north-west and the chimpanzee tracking quest in the primate’s capital of Kibale National Park in the south. Further in the south west is Queen Elizabeth National Park known for its diversity of wildlife.