Gorilla Trekking in Rwanda: What Nobody Tells You

Almost everything written about gorilla trekking describes the hour with the gorillas. Very little describes the six hours around it, which is what most people are unprepared for.

The morning starts early and slowly

You assemble at the park headquarters at Kinigi around seven, in the cold, with coffee and a lot of other people. Groups are allocated to gorilla families over a briefing. This takes a while. Then you drive to a trailhead, which can be forty minutes away on a track that will rearrange your spine.

The walk is harder than the distance suggests

Trackers set out at dawn to find where each family nested, and radio their position back. You are walking towards a moving target. That can mean forty minutes or it can mean five hours, and nobody knows which when you set off.

The ground is volcanic soil, which after rain is not mud so much as grease. You are mostly above 2,500 metres. There are stinging nettles at chest height for long stretches. None of this is a reason not to go — it is a reason to bring gloves.

Hire a porter

This is the single best piece of advice on this page. A porter carries your bag, hauls you up the steep sections, and knows exactly where to put your feet. The fee is modest and goes directly to someone from the surrounding communities, some of them former poachers now earning from the forest standing rather than falling.

Then you arrive

You leave your bags with the porters, take a camera, and go the last stretch quietly. And then there is a silverback lying in a clearing eight metres away, entirely unbothered, while juveniles wrestle in the vegetation and an infant tries to climb its mother's head.

The hour is strictly kept. It is the fastest hour of the trip, and you will spend part of it forgetting to take photographs.

What to bring

• Waterproof jacket and over-trousers, not a light shower layer
• Boots with ankle support and real grip, already broken in
• Gardening-weight gloves — for nettles and for grabbing vegetation
• Long sleeves and long trousers, tucked into socks
• Gaiters, in any month with rain in it
• A dry bag for your camera
• Cash for the porter

On permits

Permits are limited each day and set by the Rwanda Development Board, along with the minimum age and the health rules. Pricing and requirements change from time to time, so we confirm the current position in writing before anything is booked rather than quoting a figure here that may be out of date.

Would we do it twice?

Yes, and many people do. The second trek is often better, because you know what is coming and can spend the hour watching rather than processing.