Fort Portal

We did our predawn advance to Posta on cue, and yes the askari, happily tipped, was still around. He escorted us towards the main entrance and asked us to wait at a spot where a queue starts forming. Already there were people there, including children returning to school. The doors to the ticket hall were opened not long after 6 am and we were asked to place all our luggage in a neat order along a long piece of tarpaulin. The staff got a dog to sniff out the bags, but I have no idea what kind of items they watch out for: Drugs? Illegal foodstuffs like bush meat? Smuggled manufactured goods? It was the first time I had ever seen a bus operator with this level of security. In fact when we finally queued to purchase the tickets another Posta staff briefed us with the clarity and emphasis of an army general on protecting our valuables by keeping an eye on them and not getting too friendly with your neighbour. Jason reached the counter first and asked for ''2 tickets to Fort Portal, please''. The cashier briskly responded, ''Posta Bus does not go to Fort Portal... next!''

The Bradt travel guide book, that had indicated that Posta Bus does go to Fort Portal, was already outdated, and the askari was clearly clueless but we didn’t have time to contemplate and point fingers so, on the advice of some people we headed straight towards the bus terminal which brought on its own complications. Now, there are 2 big termini in this area: the Kampala old taxi (public minivan) park and the bus station (terminus). We saw the taxi park but my guide book photocopy page with the map of Kampala read like the map of Narnia. Very little similarity with the real layout of the city! We asked a lady standing near a corner kiosk how to get there. It turned out later on that she pointed in the right direction but the vendor of the kiosk contradicted her and pointed us another way. She conceded and agreed. After a while I had that feeling that we were on another chicken run. I saw a cluster of buses near a petrol station with one indicating the destination as Juba, South Sudan. Oh, boy. I stopped one kid (no pun intended) who seemed to be some sort of bus conductor or general hustler (pick one) for directions and his reluctance to be bothered with our plight turned to zeal within seconds. Maybe Jason's presence and our sudden lost foreigner label increased his incentives. He still needed the assistance of a shopkeeper to get us in the right direction and the next thing we knew, we were skipping down some panya routes (alley ways). We emerged in the busy bus park and we hit a pot of luck, hollywood style. Just as a Link'd bus for Fort Portal was revving up to leave our adopted minder alerted its conductor that there were two more passengers ready to jump on board.

The bustling Kampala Taxi Park (Courtesy of The Poultry Project)

Being last means you get the backseat. Time for Isaac's African Massage Part II. We inched out of Kampala like toothpaste, slowly getting onto the Mubende-Fort Portal road. The skyline of the Kampala centre and its environs sat on hilltop islands above the morning fog. The fog still remained in most valleys even after we went past the Kampala city limits. We had a brief stopover on the roadside for a toilet break. Dozens of passengers scattered along a side road to do their thing, scattered mostly right in front of the gate to someones house who will not need too much imagination to figure out why his garden area has a uric smell. There was a major stop at Mubende mostly to allow passengers to buy food from the roadside vendors. All sorts of tantalising (looking) food was being waved around and in some cases thrusted through windows: roast (don't ask me what kind) meat on skewers, roast plantain, packs of nuts, soft drinks, ''high protein'' (glucose doused) biscuits, chapatis, bananas (did I mention plantain?)....We had brought some snacks with us that we bought in Kampala. It was a better idea to exercise caution with buying streetside food (not doing it!) ahead of our big trek of the Rwenzoris that demanded the maximum possible fitness, and preferably a stomach with good bacteria.

If Indonesia is the land of thousands of islands, Uganda must be the land of thousands of hills. The scenery was sometimes akin with the Kenyan central highlands, with tea plantations, pine and eucalyptus trees dotted along the Mubende - Kjenjojo section of the road until we cruised through a rainforest section, that is part of the Kibale National Park. According the UWA (Ugandan Wildlife Authority) website, it ''contains one of the loveliest and most varied tracts of tropical forest in Uganda. Forest cover, interspersed with patches of grassland and swamp, dominates the northern and central parts of the park on an elevated plateau. The park is home to a total of 70 mammal species, most famously 13 species of primate including the chimpanzee''. So much to see, so little time!

Testing out football celebrations on the Toro Kingdom's Palace Hill.

We arrived at high noon in Fort Portal and were immediately swamped by boda riders. We knew that it was a short walk up a hill into the centre, albeit with our rucksacks, so we rejected their offers for a ride up. Fort Portal seemed alarmingly neatly presented, with less of the chaotic, colourful but enterprising marketplace scene that we got used to in elsewhere in Uganda. The Bradt guidebook description gave it an aura (in my wild imagination) of an Amercan western frontier town overlooked by the Rocky Mountains. Our first port of call was a good old Stanbic branch (not the local saloon bar) to try our luck on those stingy cash machines. What will the slot machine produce for us this time? Nothing. Jason's card got regurgitated out like a bad dinner and I didn't even bother. We wondered up the main drag which can be described as a boulevard with the usual streaming of bodas, cars, trucks, and as usual not noticing the well marked pedestrian crossings. On our way to our next stop, the hotel, we saw numerous well stocked grocery stores, surely a mark of a thriving local economy.

Ahead, on a lone hill, one of the many sparsely spread chains of hills and craters, sits the palace of the King of Toro, the regional semi-autonomous kingdom. We found our target, the Kenneth Inn, a budget but well equipped bed and breakfast with a laundry service. By now we were already getting tired of wearing the same sticky, dusty clothing. Jason was keen to dig a market scene nearby, and it was market day today. I decided to have a nap. That bumpy ride from Kampala wore me out.

The King of Toro, Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru in full regalia (Courtesy of Uganda Culture)

I woke up in time to experience the sunset and hopefully catch some striking views of the mountains. There were no bars or restaurants with a view westwards to the mountain range. A missed opportunity for extra tourism! One member of staff at the Rwenzori Traveller's Inn recommended that we go up the palace hill. We did a very short hike up to it. The Rwenzori lower, northern range was just visible through the hazy evening air. It would soon be dark and we needed to find a good vantage point to profit from a potentially spectacular sunset and get some good photography done. It proved to be a mediocre sunset but the calmness and peace on the view was something. There was a rather long call to prayer from a nearby mosque, whose smooth drone added to the stillness of the new moon and a gentle swaying of birds through the cool musky breeze.

We kept our promise to the Rwenzori Traveller's Inn guy that we would dine there. We craved for anything Ugandan that we had not yet tasted but some dishes still needed to be ordered hours in advance! We finally did taste something new, millet, served, as is custom, in a mini basket. We ate this together with beef stew and matoke.