For centuries the source of the Nile was geography's great unanswered question. Where did a river that watered the whole of Egypt actually begin? The search consumed Victorian Britain and broke several of its explorers. On July 28, 1862, John Hanning Speke reached the outlet of Lake Victoria here and named the cascade Ripon Falls, declaring it the Nile's source. He was right about the lake, even as the question of the river's most distant headwater stayed contested for another century. He named the cascade after George Robinson, the Marquess of Ripon, who had recently served as president of Britain's Royal Geographical Society, the institution that had sponsored so much of the search. Standing at Jinja, it is hard not to feel the weight of that obsession, the sheer human cost poured into locating one stretch of water on a map, a quest that defined an age of exploration.

The Ripon Falls that Speke named no longer exist. In 1954 the Owen Falls Dam, known locally as Nalubaale, was completed across the Nile just downstream, and the rising reservoir drowned the falls entirely. What was once a rocky cascade is now a smooth, broad outflow, the river sliding quietly from the lake past the dam's turbines. Downstream, the same fate later met Bujagali Falls, a famed run of rapids submerged in 2011 by another hydropower dam. Uganda's hunger for electricity has reshaped the young Nile again and again. The source still draws visitors to the spot, marked midstream, but the thundering falls the explorers described survive only in old photographs and the memory of the river.

Jinja markets itself as the adventure capital of Uganda, and the claim holds up. The White Nile below the town carries some of the most reliable whitewater in Africa, and rafting companies run trips from gentle Grade 3 floats to churning Grade 5 sections that flip boats and drench everyone aboard. When the Bujagali rapids were lost to the dam, operators relocated downstream to runs like Itanda Falls to keep the sport alive. Beyond rafting, the town offers kayaking lessons, quad biking, horseback tours, and a bungee jump that drops you toward an eddy of the Nile until your head skims the water. For travelers crossing East Africa, Jinja is where the itinerary turns adrenal.

Away from the river, Jinja is an easygoing town with a faded colonial grid and a famously chaotic market, acres of stalls selling everything from motor parts to chicken hearts. It is also one of the few places in Uganda set up for souvenir hunting, with shops near the Source Cafe stocking drums, hand-painted cloth, and locally made guitars. The food is a draw in its own right. Street vendors fold the *Rolex*, an omelette rolled inside a chapati, a cheap and beloved Ugandan staple whose name plays on "rolled eggs." And the local beer, Nile Special, is brewed right here, named for the river that made the town. It is the kind of place travelers plan to leave in a day and end up staying a week.