8 Day Rwanda Hiking And Gorilla Trekking Safari

Our driver guide collects you and we head south, breaking the long road with two stops worth making. Nyanza, seat of the Rwandan monarchy, where the reconstructed royal residence stands in woven wood and thatch and the sacred long horned inyambo cattle are still sung to by their herders. Then Huye and the Ethnographic Museum, given to Rwanda by Belgium in 1987 and holding one of the better collections on the continent. Lunch there, then west into tea country until the forest wall rises ahead. The drive covers about 225 kilometres over five to six hours with the stops. Nyungwe protects close to 1,000 square kilometres of montane rainforest, has stood unbroken for something like 25,000 years and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023. Check in near Uwinka or Gisakura. Our guide will go through tomorrow’s climb with you over dinner, check your boots and make sure you have gaiters, because Bigugu is not a stroll.

The hardest walking day of the trip and the one that sets the tone. Bigugu is the highest point in Nyungwe at 2,950 metres, and the trail runs roughly 13 kilometres taking around six hours round trip. You climb through changing forest zones, from tall old growth with hanging vines and giant tree ferns into low twisted montane scrub near the summit, with the vegetation getting shorter and stranger as you gain height. The ground is wet. Nyungwe takes around 2,000 millimetres of rain a year, so leaf litter over clay is the standard surface even in the dry months and balance matters more than fitness. Birders should carry binoculars, because the Bigugu trail is one of the most productive in the park for Albertine Rift endemics. On a clear day the summit gives you Lake Kivu to the north and the Congo hills beyond it. Back down for a late lunch and an early night.

A gentler day after Bigugu, though still a proper walk. The Isumo trail runs about ten kilometres from the Gisakura centre and takes around four hours, crossing the tea estate first, roughly 1,600 hectares of clipped green with pickers working the contour rows, before dropping steeply into forest and following the valley to the biggest waterfall in the park. Colobus and blue monkeys work the forest edge along the way and butterflies come up off the path in numbers after rain. In the afternoon we take you to the canopy walkway at Uwinka, a suspended bridge running about 160 metres between towers at some 60 metres above the forest floor, reached on the Igishigishigi trail past giant tree ferns. It moves underfoot in the middle span, which people either enjoy or do not. From up there the canopy runs unbroken to the horizon and you get a sense of the scale of the forest you spent yesterday inside.

We drive north up the Kivu Belt road, winding above the water with the Congo hills across the lake, three to four hours to Karongi or Rubavu depending on where we base you. The Congo Nile Trail runs 227 kilometres along the eastern shore between Rubavu and Rusizi, and the afternoon is yours on a section of it, either on a mountain bike or on foot. The route moves through fishing villages, coffee terraces, banana groves and eucalyptus stands, dirt for most of its length and relentlessly hilly, so it is harder than the profile suggests. Lake Kivu covers about 2,700 square kilometres and is the sixth largest lake in Africa, and it holds no crocodiles, no hippos and no bilharzia, so a swim at the end of the ride is straightforward. At dusk the night fishermen paddle out in threes, canoes lashed together, singing in unison to keep time. The sound carries a long way over still water.

An easy morning and a short transfer, only about an hour from Rubavu up to Musanze through farmland and eucalyptus, which gives your legs a day off before the volcanoes. If we are further south the drive is longer and we break it at the Kinunu coffee washing station, where cherries from hundreds of smallholder farms are hand sorted, pulped and dried on beds facing the water. In the afternoon we take you into the Musanze caves, a lava tube system running a couple of kilometres beneath the town, formed by the same volcanic activity that built the Virungas, with lamps taking you past bat colonies and collapsed roof openings that throw shafts of light into the tunnels. The floor is uneven basalt so wear your boots. If you would rather stay above ground, the Twin Lakes at Burera and Ruhondo give a boat trip with the volcanoes standing behind the water. Check in near Kinigi. Tomorrow is Bisoke.

The headline climb of the trip. Bisoke stands at 3,711 metres on the Rwanda and Congo border with a crater lake roughly 400 metres across sitting in its summit, and the round trip takes about six to seven hours, commonly four up and two down. There is no scrambling and nothing technical. What there is, in the last third, is a steep gradient on volcanic soil that turns to deep mud, and in the wet season it becomes a genuine slog. Trekking poles help more than fitness and gaiters help more than poles. Golden monkeys are seen fairly often on the lower bamboo, and buffalo and forest elephant leave sign your guide will read for you. At the top, weather permitting, you look down into the lake and across to Mikeno in the Congo. Weather does not always permit, and the descent is the same mud in reverse, which is where most people go over. Hire a porter.

You leave in the dark and Kinigi is cold at six, mist on the peaks, dancers performing while everyone assembles. Trackers went out at first light and are already sitting with the families, radioing positions back. The briefing runs at seven. Rangers split you into groups of eight trekkers per gorilla family and go through the rules: seven metres back, no flash, mask on during the hour. Families are assigned that morning on fitness and overnight movement, and after Bigugu and Bisoke our guide will tell the rangers plainly that you can take a harder one if you want it. Then out through farmland to the boundary wall and into bamboo and nettles. Volcanoes National Park was gazetted in 1925 and is the oldest national park in Africa, protecting five of the eight Virunga volcanoes, and the massif holds more than half the world’s mountain gorillas. When you reach the family you get one hour, and after a week of walking it lands differently.

One last climb, and the right one to end on. A short drive takes you to the trailhead, then the walk rises steadily for two to three hours through hagenia forest into the saddle between Bisoke and Karisimbi. This is where Dian Fossey set up the Karisoke Research Centre in 1967 and worked until her death, and she is buried here in the gorilla graveyard she dug herself, alongside Digit and other animals she had known individually. The camp is gone; the foundations and the graves remain. Guides tell the story properly rather than as a film summary. Having walked Bisoke two days ago, you will understand the ground she covered daily rather better than most visitors do. Back down for a late lunch, then the drive south to Kigali, two to two and a half hours, arriving in the evening. This day suits a late flight; if yours is early we swap in Buhanga Eco Park and leave in the morning.