3 Day Bwindi Gorilla Trekking Safari From Kigali

Our driver guide meets you at Kigali International Airport and we head northwest through the Rwandan hills, terraced to the ridgeline and busy with markets and bicycle taxis. The Virunga volcanoes stand off to your right for much of it, and near Musanze we can pull in at a viewpoint over Sabyinyo, Gahinga and Muhabura before the border. We cross at Cyanika for the Rushaga and Nkuringo sectors, and our guide handles the vehicle paperwork and walks you through immigration on both sides. Then the road climbs into Kigezi, steeper and greener, past Lake Mutanda with the volcanoes reflected in it on a still afternoon. Total driving time runs four to five hours including the crossing. Bwindi covers about 331 square kilometres between 1,160 and 2,607 metres and has been continuously forested for something like 25,000 years, which is why the undergrowth earns the name. Check in at your lodge on the forest edge, and pack your daypack tonight.

Breakfast early, then to the sector briefing station for half past seven. Uganda Wildlife Authority rangers cover the rules and split everyone into groups of eight trekkers per gorilla family: keep the minimum distance, which Uganda’s guidance now sets at around ten metres, no flash, no eating in their presence, voices low, and nobody treks with a cold. Trackers went out at first light and are already with the families. Then into the forest, and Bwindi is harder walking than the Virungas, a constant sequence of steep ridges and deep valleys with rangers cutting through the tangle ahead of you. The trek can run anywhere from one to six hours depending on where the family has moved overnight. Bwindi shelters roughly 459 mountain gorillas, close to half the world population, across around twenty habituated families, more than anywhere else. When you reach them, one hour. Hire a porter at the trailhead; on this terrain it is close to compulsory. Afternoon at the lodge with your boots off.

A slower morning to finish. The Batwa lived in this forest as hunter gatherers for thousands of years and were moved out when the park was gazetted in 1991. The Batwa cultural walk is led by Batwa guides who demonstrate hunting techniques, fire making, medicinal plants and shelter building, and who talk about life inside the forest and what changed afterwards. It is informative and it is not a comfortable story, which is as it should be. Afterwards we take you down to Lake Mutanda for a dugout canoe on water scattered with small islands and ringed by the Virunga volcanoes, which is the most restful hour available in this corner of Uganda. Then the drive back across the border to Kigali, four to five hours, arriving in the late afternoon or early evening for an onward flight. If your departure is the next day we will book you a night in the capital.