There’s a “surging interest” in apes, said Euronews. Nature documentaries like David Attenborough’s “A Gorilla Story”, which revisits the gorilla family he first filmed in 1978, are inspiring tourists to book gorilla-trekking holidays in Rwanda, Uganda and the Republic of Congo.
But tracking these beautiful creatures in their natural habitat isn’t easy: it’s physically strenuous, and permits are strictly limited, to protect the endangered animals.
Rwanda has 14 mountain gorilla families that have been carefully habituated to human observers and “can be visited by up to eight tourists for one hour daily”, said Lizzie Frainier in The Times. I travelled to the foothills of Mount Karisimbi in Volcanoes National Park to meet a family group of 14. Watching a baby gorilla running around in a “ferny glen” and frolicking into the “dense brush” was “magical”. I’ve had my fair share of wildlife experiences as a travel editor but none has compared to this.
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This kind of “low-volume, high-value tourism” is pricey: a day’s trek costs over £1,000, with proceeds going towards anti-poaching initiatives and community development. Accommodation ranges from basic guesthouses to “ultra-luxe boutique hotels”. If you really want to push the boat out, check in at Wilderness Bisate Reserve, which has “epic misty 360-degree views and four palatial suites”.
On my trek through Uganda’s Bwindi National Park, the forest suddenly becomes “alive” with mountain gorillas, said Olivia Singer in Vogue. On my five-day trip with Abercrombie & Kent, I spot “two gargantuan silverbacks and a baby”; they “meander around us” for an hour “as they go about their business”. It is, I decide at once, “the best day of my life”.
Each night, we rested our heads in Gorilla Forest Lodge’s “remarkably lovely cabin suites”. Gorgeously decorated with “locally crafted furnishings”, each room features a “bathtub so vast, it could easily accommodate a silverback”.
