Rwanda, One Hour With the Gorillas
A small, orderly country where you can land on Monday and be standing in front of a gorilla family on Tuesday morning.
The Most Expensive Hour in Travel, and Worth It
A gorilla permit in Rwanda costs more than the flight from India. That is not an accident. The country set the price high on purpose, to keep visitor numbers low and the animals undisturbed. Eight people per family per day, one hour, and then you leave. What you get for it is unlike any other wildlife encounter. Not a sighting across a plain, but a family group a few metres away, entirely unbothered, going about the morning while you stand there. Everything else about Rwanda is easier than you expect. It is a small country with good roads and very little distance between the parks. No charter flights, no long gravel stretches, no complicated logistics. Just the permit, and that is ours to sort.
Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Big Five, and a Lake
Four very different parks, none of them more than a few hours from the last. Two makes a week. All four makes a fortnight.
Volcanoes National Park
The gorilla park, on the volcanic chain in the north west
Dian Fossey worked here and is buried on the mountain. Golden monkeys live in the same forest and cost a fraction of the gorilla permit.
Nyungwe Forest
Ancient rainforest in the south west, with chimpanzees and colobus monkeys in the canopy
A suspension bridge runs sixty metres above the forest floor, which is where most people take the photograph.
Akagera
Savannah in the east, and the only place in Rwanda that looks like a conventional safari
Lions and rhino were brought back over the last decade, so the Big Five are here again.
Lake Kivu
Where the trip stops moving
Beaches on a freshwater lake, no bilharzia, no crocodiles, and nothing scheduled.
Rwanda, at a glance.
A small, hilly country built around one hour with the gorillas, with rainforest, savannah and a lake filling out the rest.
You Get Sixty Minutes. Nobody Gets More.
Out Early, Uphill, and Then You Wait
You are assigned a gorilla family at dawn and set off with trackers who already know roughly where it slept. The walk can take forty minutes or four hours. It is uphill, often muddy, and at altitude. Then the trackers stop, you leave the bags, and the family is in front of you. Silverback, females, juveniles wrestling in the undergrowth. Nobody moves away. The hour starts the moment you arrive and it goes faster than you will believe. Only eight permits are issued per family per day. That is the whole reason it feels the way it does.
Create Your Own Itinerary
Go to the Memorial Before You Go Anywhere Else
In 1994, over roughly a hundred days, around a million Rwandans were killed. The Kigali Genocide Memorial is where more than 250,000 of them are buried. It is not a sight to tick off, and it is not easy. But almost every traveller who goes finds it necessary, because it explains the country you are about to spend a week in. The order, the cleanliness, the deliberate way Rwanda does everything now — all of it makes more sense afterwards. Give it a morning. Go before the parks rather than after, and let the rest of the trip sit on top of it.
Permits Decide the Dates, Not the Other Way Round
On most trips the dates come first. Rwanda works backwards. A limited number of gorilla permits are issued each day, they are non transferable, and in the dry months they go a long way ahead. So we secure the permit, then build the trip around the date it lands on. Everything else in Rwanda is flexible, because the drives are short and the parks are close. Six days covers the gorillas and one other park. Ten covers all four. Send your dates and group size and we will tell you what is still open.
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FAQ
Rwanda Travel FAQs
June to September and December to February are the dry stretches and the easiest for trekking. March to May is the long rains, harder underfoot but with better permit availability.
Six days cover the gorillas and one other park. Ten covers Volcanoes, Nyungwe, Akagera, and Lake Kivu without rushing.
Harder than it looks. Steep, often muddy, at altitude, and it can last from under an hour to most of a morning. Porters are available and worth taking.
Most operations set fifteen as the minimum for gorilla trekking. Younger children can do other activities while the rest of the group treks.
Rwanda is smaller, easier, and quicker to reach the park from the airport. Uganda costs less per permit but involves considerably more driving. We will talk you through both.
Malaria precautions are needed. Yellow fever usually matters for returning to India rather than entering Rwanda, and it has to be arranged well ahead. We raise this at booking.