Six places around Fort Portal turn up on lists of attractions without ever carrying enough between them for a page each: a viewpoint, three lakes, a colonial fort and a monument. This page is the honest home for them. Some are worth an hour of your day, one is a lodge rather than a site, and one no longer exists in any form you can visit.
The bigger sites in the area have their own pages: the Amabere caves, Karuziika Palace, the Ndali and Kasenda crater lakes and Mahoma Falls. The Fort Portal guide covers the city.
Top of the World Viewpoint Hiking and the Crater Ridge
A high ridge in the crater country south of the city, on the road down towards Rwakwenzi, and the best place to see how the crater field is laid out. You stand on a rim and see several lakes at once, with tea below, the Rwenzori wall west and Kibale Forest east.
Counts differ. Most descriptions say three lakes, some say nine, and what you actually see depends on where you stand and how clear the air is. On a good morning the view reaches as far as Lake George and the Kichwamba escarpment on the far side of the rift. By midday it usually does not.
A small charge is collected at the top by whoever holds the land, a place up there sells refreshments and sometimes has rooms, and the road is manageable without a four wheel drive when dry. From the crater lake camps it is two to three hours on foot through coffee gardens, which is the better way to arrive.
Lake Saka Walking Tours North of the City
Lake Saka is the largest body of water within easy reach of Fort Portal, three or four kilometres north of the centre, and unlike most of its neighbours several sources say it is not strictly an explosion crater at all. It supports commercial fishing, which almost none of the crater lakes do.
The reason to go is the walk. A guided route runs around the lake and over the rims to the Amabere ga Nyina Mwiru caves in roughly two hours. From the centre you follow Lugard Road past the golf course onto Saka Road, walkable if you are staying centrally.
One correction worth making. A widely copied line says Saka is safe to swim in. No Ugandan fresh water is free of bilharzia risk, and a larger lake with shallow margins and fishing activity is not the low risk end of the scale. Treat it as low risk at best, never as cleared, and read the swimming guide before deciding.
Lake Kaitabarogo on the Northern Crater Trip
Kaitabarogo, mapped in places as Kaitabarago, is a small crater lake roughly two kilometres east of Saka and about three kilometres north of Fort Portal. It sits in the northern cluster with Kyegere, Nyabikora and the deeper lakes towards Kyaninga.
Almost nothing is published about it and that is the finding rather than a gap in the research. There is no campsite, no viewpoint, no guide based there and no charge, because there is nothing to charge for. What it is good for is being crossed: walkers doing the northern circuit from Saka towards the caves pass it, and a rider on the boda boda route will stop if you ask.
Lake Nyabikere and Crater Valley Kibale: a Lodge, Not a Tour
Crater Valley Kibale appears on lists of Fort Portal attractions and it is not one. It is a budget lodge, usually shortened to CVK, sitting on the shore of Lake Nyabikere about twenty kilometres from Fort Portal and under ten from the Kanyanchu chimpanzee trekking centre. Tents, bandas, a restaurant and a lake in front of it.
This site lists trips sold by Ugandan operators, not lodges, so the property gets no page here. What is worth knowing is the lake. Nyabikere means the lake of frogs and earns the name after dark. It is swum in, canoed on and fished, L’Hoest’s monkeys are reported around its shore, and it sits on the walking route towards the Top of the World.
Sold Crater Valley Kibale as an attraction, you are being sold accommodation. The lake and the walks around it are covered on the crater lakes page.
Fort Lugard in Toro: What a Heritage Tour Can and Cannot Show
This needs saying plainly, because two different places carry the name. The Fort Lugard you can walk around is at Old Kampala, on the hill above the city centre, and it is not in Toro. The Toro fort people mean when they say Fort Lugard was Fort Gerry, built at what is now Fort Portal in the eighteen nineties under Frederick Lugard’s command and named afterwards for Sir Gerald Portal. Mud walls, a Sudanese garrison, and a job to do: shielding the restored Toro kingdom from Bunyoro under Kabalega.
Nothing of it stands. The name outlasted the structure and became the name of a city, which is a very Ugandan outcome and the only thing a visitor can now see of it.
Lugard also set up a chain of small forts along the northern boundary of Toro in the same period, garrisoned by Sudanese soldiers left behind by Emin Pasha, at places including Katwe, Kijura, Butiiti and Nyakabimba, several of them now in Kyenjojo district. They are mentioned in histories rather than maintained as monuments, and nothing is set up for visitors at any of them. Anyone selling a Fort Lugard tour here should be asked what they intend to show you.
The Sir Gerald Portal Monument on a Fort Portal City Tour
Sir Gerald Portal was the British special commissioner sent to report on Uganda, and he died in the mid eighteen nineties shortly after returning from the country. The fort here was named for him, then the town, and eventually the city.
A monument in Fort Portal marks that founding. It is a five minute stop, not a site with an entrance or a guide, and easy to walk past. Ask a local guide to point it out rather than hunting for signage, and take it as part of a city walking tour with St John’s Cathedral and the market.
Worth noting what it commemorates. This is a colonial founding monument, and Ugandan opinion about that period is not uniform. A guide who tells you what it meant on both sides is doing the job properly.
One name on the regional lists we could not place at all is Kajumagi, given as an eco tourism site. It appears on neither the Kyenjojo nor the Kagadi district inventories, and no operator, map or reference source carries it. A waterfall called Jumaga does exist in Kagadi, on the River Nguse rather than the Muzizi, and the two names may have been confused somewhere along the way. Treat Kajumagi as unverified until somebody local can point at it.
Planning a Day Trip Around These Smaller Sites
None of these carries a day on its own and together they fill one comfortably. The monument and a city walking tour take a morning. Saka and Kaitabarogo are a couple of hours on foot, best done north out of the city and finished at the Amabere caves. Top of the World and Nyabikere sit south in the crater field and belong to the crater lakes day.
Boda boda is how locals link them. A rider hired for the day covers the northern lakes and the caves for a fraction of what a vehicle costs. Agree the route and the price in the morning.
Frequently Asked Questions About These Fort Portal Tours
Are any of these worth a special trip?
Top of the World, yes, if you are anywhere near the crater field. The rest are worth the time they take rather than a detour of their own. Saka is a good walk, the monument is a stop, and Kaitabarogo is scenery you pass rather than a destination.
What does it cost to visit Top of the World?
A small local charge has been collected at the top, reported in the region of UGX 5,000 per person, set by whoever holds the land rather than by any authority. It changes without notice, nothing is published, and there is no ticket office, so carry small notes and expect to pay in cash at the gate.
Can you swim in Lake Saka?
People do. Treat the widely repeated claim that it is safe as unfounded, because no Ugandan lake is free of bilharzia risk and a larger lake with shallow edges is not among the lower risk ones. If you want a crater lake swim, the small steep sided ones in the southern cluster carry less risk, though still not none.
Is there anything left of Fort Lugard at Fort Portal?
No. The fort was Fort Gerry, built in the eighteen nineties, and nothing of it survives above ground. The surviving Fort Lugard is at Old Kampala, which is a different site in a different city.
Can you stay at any of these places?
Top of the World has had rooms and a restaurant, though whether either is open on a given day is worth asking before relying on it. Lake Nyabikere has lodges on its shore. Saka and Kaitabarogo have nothing.
How do you get around them without a vehicle?
Boda boda for everything outside the city and your own feet inside it. Riders hired for a day will cover the northern lakes, the caves and a viewpoint, and one passenger per bike is the rule worth holding to.
None of these sites is sold as a trip on its own and nothing here is listed against them. They are stops that a Ugandan tour operator folds into a Fort Portal day or a western circuit, with a driver or a local guide who knows where the turnings are. Send an enquiry to any of the independent operators listed on this site and they answer, quote and run the trip directly, because we take no bookings and charge you nothing.