Unforgettable Glimpse of the Great Apes

While sharing in and directly supporting their conservation success story.

We share over 98% of our DNA with gorillas. Encountering the incredibly rare mountain gorillas of Uganda and Rwanda will leave you spellbound and inspired by the herculean efforts to protect them and their fragile forest ecosystem.

One Ugandan Woman believed she could help save mountain gorillas. And that’s exactly what she did…

In the early 1990s, Ugandan Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka decided she wanted to help save Uganda’s mountain gorillas. She decided the best way to achieve this was by improving both the health and well-being of the gorillas and local people living alongside them and their forest refuge. She became Uganda’s first wildlife veterinarian and founded a local NGO named Conservation through Public Health. Since Dr Gladys’ ground-breaking and trail blazing career in gorilla conservation, the population has more than doubled and her integrated One Health approach has been considered ‘revolutionary’. We partner with Dr Gladys and her incredible team at Conservation through Public Health based in Buhoma on the northern edge of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. When visiting Buhoma, we will arrange for you to learn more about her organization, visit their field base camp and (if possible) have dinner with Dr Gladys herself!

You can purchase her recent book, ‘Walking with Gorillas’ online here.

Safety - for you, the rangers and the gorillas - is the most important element for successfully trekking the critically endangered mountain gorillas.

Each trekking group (maximum 8 tourists) is accompanied by:

  • 1 lead guide ranger who will provide you with a safety and informational briefing before the trek

  • 2 armed rangers who are trained to, in the case of potentially dangerous encounters with forest elephants, fire warning shots to scare them off

  • 3 expert trackers who locate the gorilla group early in the morning by finding their previous sleeping nests. Many of these trackers were also involved in habituating the gorilla families.

“I shall never forget my first encounter with gorillas. Sound preceded sight. Odor preceded sound in the form of an overwhelming, musky-barnyard, humanlike scent. The air was suddenly rent by a high-pitched series of screams followed by the rhythmic rondo of sharp pok-pok chestbeats from a great silverbacked male obscured behind what seemed an impenetrable wall of vegetation.”

— Dian Fossey