Very soon I’ll be trekking through dense, dark forests. I taste their excellent Gorilla Coffee - rich and velvety - the following morning, as I gaze at chilly moss-green mountains snuggled by scarves of woolly mist. Costing a fraction of the price charged by luxury lodges, it’s another way to keep down the cost of a gorilla-trekking safari while learning about community conservation at the same time. Visitors can tour its laboratory, where samples regularly collected from gorillas are scrutinised for microbes, drop in for a coffee at its new Gorilla Conservation Cafe, or stay the night in comfortable and affordable en suite guest rooms. The NGO was founded by award-winning vet and conservationist Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, to safeguard the future of gorillas by improving living conditions and livelihoods for local communities. At the entrance to the research base, farmers sift through sun-roasted coffee beans - part of a fair-trade initiative set up by CTPH. “Gorillas often wander into farmlands,” explains Sharon Akampurira from CTPH, when I meet her to learn more about the organisation’s work. Run by Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), the accommodation is part of the NGO research base. Tea, coffee, bananas and potatoes are all harvested on precipitous slopes where wild creatures - including gorillas - hide.Īrriving into Buhoma, it’s a short but heart-pumping uphill walk past the town’s main sprawl of wooden stalls to my mountainside base in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. Unauthorized use is prohibited.Įventually, tarmac roads melt into red earth, mountains rise and smoke coils from mud kilns. Moving through districts en route to the southwest of Uganda, I spy calabash fruits drying in the sun beside fields of cattle in Mburo, and engalabi, cow-skin drums, stacked outside the village of Mpambire. On the outskirts of Kampala market stalls overflow with glistening mangoes, enormous avocados and onions shinier than snooker balls. We pass through traffic-clogged towns, emerald fields and a crush of hillsides that rise and fall like a roller coaster.
Views of ever-changing landscapes and snapshots of city and rural life enrich the overland journey. After landing in Entebbe, Uganda’s international air hub, just outside the capital of Kampala, I shunned pricier internal flights in favour of a nine-hour drive to Buhoma, the gateway to Bwindi, where most treks begin. My adventure had begun several days earlier, long before I entered the forest. That equates to around 500 individuals, according to the last official census in 2019, with 21 gorilla troops currently habituated for tourism - more than in any other area of Africa.īut a visit to the home of gorillas is about so much more than 60 minutes of ape activity. And nearly 50% of the world’s population of mountain gorillas live in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. Yet anyone who’s scaled the slippery slopes of volcanoes or squeezed and scraped through bamboo thickets to spend time with some of our closest cousins will tell you it’s money well spent.īesides, my one-hour Ugandan encounter is half the price of what it would cost in neighbouring Rwanda. If I were to break down every penny spent on my US$700 (£560) permit, this intimate viewing has set me back $175 (£140) so far.Ĭosting up to US$1,500 (£1,200) for an hour’s viewing in some countries, gorilla trekking is undoubtedly one of the world’s more costly wildlife experiences.
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).įor the last 15 minutes, the silverback in front of me has been fiddling with his belly button.
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