Day 6: Fort Portal – Kisoro – Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park

Day Six started in the blurred watercolour of dawn at Fort Portal, where dew clung to everything like nature’s way of reminding you that, yes, you’re still alive, and no, you can’t go back to bed. Fort Portal has that rare combination of feeling quaintly forgotten by time while simultaneously reminding you that time is ongoing and occasionally hostile, especially in the mornings. There’s a feeling here like you’re stuck in a screensaver of mountains and clouds that want to swallow you whole.

The plan was simple: Drive from Fort Portal to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park by way of Kisoro and marvel at the wonders of Uganda along the way. The reality? A seemingly endless string of switchbacks, potholes that could swallow medium-sized livestock, and enough dust to make you question your decision to have ever brought anything resembling a “white” article of clothing on this trip. That road to Kisoro is not so much a road as it is a philosophical test. You begin to contemplate things—like the futility of human endeavour, the meaning of patience, and why, in god’s name, rental companies don’t make spare tyres mandatory when navigating the Ugandan Highlands.

For starters, there is the map: a concept more abstract than helpful when dealing with Uganda’s road network, which sometimes resembles the playful scrawl of a toddler with a crayon. You begin the journey feeling ambitious, imagining this grand, cinematic road trip with sweeping vistas. Then the reality of Kisoro’s highway hits—well, not so many hits as *grinds*—slowly, over hours, like the road is resisting your forward motion out of sheer obstinance.

You pass small villages along the way, each set against a backdrop of misty peaks so perfect it feels almost rehearsed. The people along the roadside watch you pass with expressions that range from mild curiosity to total indifference, which is probably a reflection of how often they’ve seen starry-eyed travellers like yourself deluded by the romance of the road, utterly unaware of the dust they’re about to swallow.

At one point, a sign suggests there is coffee nearby. There isn’t. There was never coffee. There was only the promise of coffee—an illusion, a mirage that dissolved as quickly as your will to ask a third local where the café might be, only to be met with the universal “just down the road” shrug. When you finally accept that the road does not end and time is merely a construct invented by people who don’t travel through Kisoro, you resign yourself to the ride.

The topography seems to conspire against you, with mountains that rise and fall like someone in charge of the landscape couldn’t decide on a coherent design. Uganda’s peaks feel impossible near and far at the same time—near because they loom ominously in your peripheral vision, far because every twist in the road reveals a whole new series of them as if the country is folding and unfolding itself to make sure you don’t ever arrive where you think you’re headed.

Hours drag on. You’ve listened to every song on your phone twice, then dipped into the regrettable podcasts you downloaded on a whim. You’ve started to question the purpose of everything. Not just the trip—*everything.* But then, just when living in your car forever seems like a reasonable conclusion to your life, you catch your first glimpse of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.

It’s not subtle. Bwindi appears on the horizon like a monolith, a great dark wall of dense green foliage that reminds you that this place is more than a park—it’s *Impenetrable*. Capital I. Capital F. Nature here has no intention of being friendly. This forest is the thick, wild, unbridled kind that doesn’t care whether you think you’re on an “adventure” or not. A part of you wants to turn around and head back to Fort Portal. (But also a part of you that remembers Fort Portal is no longer an option because, for better or worse, you’re committed now.)

Arriving in Bwindi isn’t like a pivotal moment in an adventure film, where music swells and birds take flight in slow motion. It’s like creeping up on something ancient and indifferent, feeling small and inconsequential. Which, to be fair, you are. You’re very small. The forest, which seems to pulsate with the weight of its biodiversity, dwarfs you both physically and existentially.

You park. You stretch. You wonder briefly if your legs even work anymore after the eight-hour mental marathon they’ve just endured. The trees loom overhead, branches twisting into a canopy so thick it looks like they’re plotting something. The air smells different—heavier, damp, like every breath you take is a sip of the forest itself.

Ultimately, you realize the journey wasn’t a test of endurance or willpower. It was a preview, a preamble to the far more unsettling, humbling experience that awaits. Because Bwindi, much like the road that leads to it, doesn’t care about you, your plans, or your expectations. It just *is*. And all you can do is try to keep up.