Mountain Gorilla Trekking in Uganda: An Hour That Changed Everything
- Rand Blimes
- May 25, 2025
- 10 min read
In July of 2021, my wife and I got to check off a major life-long bucket list item: mountain gorilla trekking in Uganda. This was the centerpiece of our week-long tour across Uganda. Here is our story of visiting the gorillas.
Into the Mist: Climbing Toward Giants
Walking uphill through dense jungle isn’t easy. Even with a guide hacking a trail ahead of you, it’s not easy.
Every step is awkward, uneven, slick with moss or mud. Every pause to catch your breath brings the nagging concern that somewhere underfoot is a nest of angry centipedes ready to swarm up your leg and devour you from the knees down.
Every handhold is a gamble. You grab vines, roots, tree trunks—whatever will keep you from sliding backwards—but any one of them might be laced with thorns, covered in itchy sap, or hiding an entirely new family of angry centipedes eager to work their way down from your elbows.
The temperature is moderate, but the jungle doesn’t care. The canopy traps every molecule of moisture close to the ground, soaking you in a film of sweat and fog. Your shirt clings. Your camera swings against your hip. A GoPro sits proudly atop your head, making you feel like some awkward reconnaissance droid sent in from a low-budget 1970s sci-fi film.
And yet—despite all of that—you are not miserable. You are incandescently, inescapably happy. The inner kid in you, the one who once watched grainy documentaries on VHS and dreamed of distant forests, is screaming with joy. You're in the jungle. In Africa. The air feels like myth. Every tree seems to have its own ancient memory. Taken together, the forest feels eternal. Epic.
You are already certain this is one of the best days of your life.
And then, your guide—calm, silent, knowing—halts, gently parts a curtain of leaves, and simply points up.
You follow his finger.
And a whole new level of happy is unlocked.
Two young mountain gorillas are clambering through the canopy above your head.
Who Are the Mountain Gorillas?
Mountain gorillas are a distinct subspecies of gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei), different from their more numerous cousins, the lowland gorillas found in the forests of Central and West Africa. While lowland gorillas can be seen in some zoos and sanctuaries, mountain gorillas do not survive in captivity. Their biology, behavior, and emotional complexity seem to depend on the wild. If you want to see them, you have to go to them—on their terms, in their forest.
There are fewer than 1,100 mountain gorillas left in the world. They live only in the misty, volcanic mountain ranges of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their numbers have been brought back from the brink of extinction through decades of intense conservation work, but they remain endangered. The threats are all too familiar: habitat loss, encroaching agriculture, poaching, and the ever-present risk of disease—especially from humans, who share so much with them.
And we do share a lot. Genetically, gorillas are about 98.4% identical to humans. We have more in common with them than we do with almost any other species on Earth. When you look into a gorilla’s eyes—really look—you don’t see “animal.” You see thought, awareness, emotion. You see someone.
Maybe that’s why they capture our imagination so deeply. They are other, but they are also us. They remind us of our place in the web of life—how close we are to nature, and how far we sometimes feel from it. Watching them, we glimpse something ancient and familiar. Something that doesn’t need words to speak.
Mountain Gorilla Trekking in Uganda: Bwindi Impenetrable Forest
Visiting the gorillas of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest starts with getting a permit. You can book one directly through the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) (learn about the process here), or—more commonly—have it arranged for you as part of a package safari, where it’s typically included in the total cost. Permit numbers are strictly limited each day to reduce environmental impact and minimize stress on the gorilla families. The fee isn’t cheap (currently $800 USD per person), but it serves a purpose: a portion goes directly to conservation efforts, while another share is used to support local communities, helping them benefit from—and protect—the forest they call home.
Getting to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest takes some effort—and that’s part of the point. The forest’s remote location in southwestern Uganda has helped preserve its mystique and biodiversity. Most travelers arrive via Entebbe or Kampala, then travel overland by private vehicle or tour group (a full day’s drive), though it’s also possible to fly into nearby airstrips like Kihihi or Kisoro and transfer from there (and Bwindi is actually closer to Kigali, Rwanda's capital, than Kampala). The forest itself was designated a national park in 1991, carved from what had long been a biologically rich but unprotected stretch of highland rainforest. Its protection sparked controversy at the time, especially among local communities who had used the forest for generations—but today, Bwindi stands as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, globally recognized for its exceptional biodiversity and as home to nearly half of the world’s remaining mountain gorillas.
How a Day with the Gorillas Begins
Permits for Bwindi Impenetrable Forest are issued for specific sectors of the park, each with its own habituated gorilla families. On the day of your trek, you report to the park headquarters for your assigned sector—early. This is where the process begins.
We checked in and were grouped with a handful of other trekkers. The Uganda Wildlife Authority keeps daily track of the gorilla families’ movements, and based on that information, park rangers assign each group to a specific family. A good guide—the kind who knows the rangers and understands the nuance—can request a family that’s either close to HQ (for an easier trek) or farther out (for those who want more time in the forest). We told our guide that our biggest goal was a good gorilla family (including little ones), but we also didn’t want to have to trudge hours and hours to find them, if possible.
Before setting out, all trekkers gather for a short cultural performance, organized by a local NGO called Ride 4 a Woman. Drums, dance, bright dresses, and proud smiles—it was a powerful reminder that this is not just about wildlife. It’s about people, too.
Then came the safety briefing: listen to your guide, keep your distance, and—at least during our visit—wear a mask. (We were there in the late tail of COVID. I’m not sure if masks are now a permanent rule, but they were strictly enforced when we went.) The distance rule was emphasized—but as we would learn, the gorillas do not always follow the rules.
After the briefing, we loaded into our van for a 30-minute drive along park roads to a small village where our trek would begin. There, we met our guide again, and received more information about the gorilla family we were going to see. We learned that the group had just welcomed a brand-new baby, only a few weeks old. My head exploded with joy.
Local community members had gathered to meet the trekkers, and we were offered the chance to hire porters. Normally, we wouldn’t have—our daypacks were light. But this wasn’t normal. This was post-lockdown tourism, and we’d made a personal decision: if we were going to start traveling again after COVID, we were going to do it intentionally, with the goal of putting money directly into local economies. As much as we could afford. So we each hired a porter. It was a small cost to us, and a meaningful wage to someone in a community that had weathered nearly two years without tourists. Which is to say, without income.
And with that, we set out—boots laced, hearts pounding, cameras ready—to find the gorillas.
Into the Forest
Our trek began through the tea fields cultivated by the village—neatly planted rows of green stretching toward the forest edge. We walked uphill along a dirt road. Cows walked with us, ambling calmly, unbothered by the strange group of camera-laden humans headed somewhere serious.
When things got steep, my wife's porter pushed her from behind to help out. And then my porter joined in and pulled her from the front. Together, they powered my wife up and over the mountains of Uganda!
And then we stepped off the road and into the jungle.
It’s hard to describe what I felt. I’d watched nature documentaries my whole life, imagined this moment for decades. Those old BBC specials. The deep narration. The mist. The moss. All of it had primed me for this. A lifetime of quiet dreaming suddenly stirred, and the weight of it coursed through me. I was in it now—the primeval forest of inner Africa. The feeling was part solemn reverence… and part maniacal screaming for joy (all internal, of course—the guides had told us to stay quiet).
Trackers had left from HQ long before us, well before sunrise. They’d already found the gorilla family and relayed the coordinates back to our guide. We weren’t searching blind—we were moving with purpose, through shadow and green, toward something very real.
Eventually, we came to a small clearing. Our guide raised a hand. We were so close.
Here, we had to drop our bags—just leave them on the forest floor. Take only what you can carry in your hands. No food. No rustling wrappers. Just cameras, lenses, and reverent energy.
And then, another briefing. But this one felt . . . different. The tone had changed. There was an edge to it now. A clarity.
If we didn’t follow the rules—
If we made noise—
If we got too close—
If we did anything to make the silverback even begin to wonder if we posed a threat—
He would flatten us. Pound us into a steaming puddle of red goo.
We were being welcomed into the presence of a powerful, wild animal. And if we disrespected that—we wouldn’t be escorted out. We’d be absorbed. Folded into the mulch of the jungle floor and quietly forgotten by the trees.
Don’t look him in the eyes.
Don’t approach the young.
Don’t even think about approaching the mother with the brand-new baby.
Be quiet. Be respectful. Be small.
With that final, gentle reminder of our potential violent death, we set off once more—climbing, gripping, slipping—toward the family waiting for us in the shadows of the mountain.
An Hour in Their World
I saw the little ones first—up in the trees, clambering and tumbling through the branches in a way that can only be described as joyful. Then I noticed an adult up there with them. A full-grown mountain gorilla in a tree. It was astonishing. One of the young ones climbed onto her back, and she began to descend—hand over hand—back to the forest floor.
The power in those hands … to carry all that weight, with grace, on a vertical surface... mind-boggling.
Once on the ground, the little one stared at us without shame. Like the chimpanzees, the adult gorillas didn’t acknowledge us at all. But the young ones? Curious. One stood at the base of a tree, hand overhead gripping vines, gently swinging as he watched us. I started shooting video, capturing him bouncing back and forth, totally absorbed. Then I switched to stills. And that’s when, of course, he beat his chest like a tiny King Kong. I missed it on video. Just a second too late.
Sometimes you just have to settle for a perfect memory.
One thing I remember clearly from squatting in the jungle was the chorus of grunts. The gorillas sat there, munching on leaves and grunting contentedly. The guides told us it’s their way of saying “I’m happy. These leaves are yummy.” I believed them, but I didn’t try any leaves myself.
We saw the mother with the brand-new baby, though we never got a good look at the little one. She held her baby tight—always tucked close. We’d catch a flash of a tiny hand or a tuft of downy hair, but never a full view. As a photographer, that made me a little sad. But as a father? It made me glad. I understood. That instinct to hold your child so close that nothing in the world could possibly cause them harm—that connection bridges species.
Eventually, the family moved on. We followed. I have no idea how anything so massive could move through such dense forest with such fluidity. But they did. I stumbled and flailed my way behind them.
They emerged from the jungle briefly, sitting just on the edge of the tea fields. I dropped down and started shooting. And then, one of the adult females—not the mother with the infant, another—walked right up and sat within two meters of me. That was definitely closer than the rules allow. I glanced at our guide, and he simply gestured for me to stay still. So I did. We follow the rules. Gorillas do what they want. She sat beside me like we were old friends. With my 100–300mm zoom lens, she was almost too close to photograph.
But it was special.
Eventually, they returned to the forest. We followed, slipping between trunks and vines. Taking good pictures was tough. The name Bwindi Impenetrable Forest is no exaggeration. I came away with plenty of photos where my camera’s autofocus had locked onto leaves instead of the gorillas. But still… toward the end of our allotted hour, I found myself squatting maybe four meters from the silverback.
He sat in a relatively open spot—rare for Bwindi—and I managed to get a few shots of him.
And then, I did what I always try to do when I’m in the presence of something special: I lowered my camera. I watched with my own eyes. I took it in. I carefully avoided making eye contact, of course. But I watched him with everything else I had. I focused on being there, rather than getting the perfect shot.
I often say I travel so I can feel more connected to the world. And usually, the connection I seek is with people. But being with those gorillas, you can see that they are thinking and feeling . . . just like we do. They’re bored. They’re happy. They’re hungry. They’re interested. And they’re often overtly disinterested.
The line between person and animal became distinctly blurry to me in the hour I spent with the mountain gorillas of Bwindi.
Being with those gorillas gave me a connection to something broader than I have ever experienced before, in a way that I didn’t even know I was looking for. Because I traveled to see the mountain gorillas of Bwindi, the world that I feel plugged into became so much larger than I had dreamt of in my philosophy.
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