As I snapped photos in rapid fire and watched mother and child hang out, I started to think about the downside of my position. The chimps were straight above me. My thoughts focused not on the probability of nature’s calling, but on the speed of my reflexes. Could I react in a sudden second?
At that moment, right on cue, this was no longer a theoretical question. “The baby chimp is laughing at you,” chuckled my otherwise ‘Very Stern Ranger-guide’. “You just got a golden shower!”
Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives. They share almost 99% of our DNA – and apparently, our scatological humour too.
Uganda holds many global superlatives: It is home to the world’s most powerful waterfall, at Murchison Falls, where I discovered that Ernest Hemingway survived two air crashes on two consecutive days. Uganda is home to all Big Five game. But the primates steal the show. Uganda hosts one of the planet’s biggest concentrations of primates.
Kibale National Park, in the southwestern part of the country, has only about 1% of the world’s population of our genetic cousins, but the highest population in Uganda. The trekking itself is tame, mostly in flat woods. Groups no larger than eight people are led by two armed rangers. Each group is permitted to spend one hour with the chimpanzees. Soon after we started the trek we diverged from the well-defined trail as we pursued one of Kibale’s four chimpanzee communities that have habituated to human presence. Although we saw many chimps at a distance, some who performed treetop acrobatics, the clock didn’t start ticking until we were near a community. That’s when I got the golden shower.
The chimp trek was a trial run for the much more demanding gorilla trek in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, near Uganda’s borders with Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. There’s zero hyperbole in its name. This is a dense forest with large hardwoods and extensive strands of bamboo on steep slopes, which makes Bwindi an ideal habitat for mountain gorillas.
About half of the world’s population of mountain gorillas are located here. But trekking can be hardcore, as I would soon learn. Fewer than half of the gorilla families at Bwindi are habituated to humans, and I was assigned a trek to observe the Kyaguriro family, wherever they might be. Our mission was to find them.
INTO THE JUNGLE
Our group of eight trekkers was led by a ranger carrying a machete, accompanied by three armed escorts. The rangers are armed to protect against wild elephants, and the guide kept pointing to me indicators that suggested an elephant had recently been in the area. We were looking for a gorilla family that was on the move, and this family didn’t conform to trails or schedules or care about the tourists who shelled out big bucks for a trekking permit. The gorillas bulldoze and meander their way through the forest. So did we.
Periodically our ranger would communicate with the ‘scout team’ – a group of trackers who set off earlier that morning to locate and shadow the gorilla family – by vocalising a primate call. Sometimes the trackers would respond with their own vocalisations. It seemed like a jungle version of the kid’s game ‘Marco Polo’ that enabled us to navigate toward the trackers using audible signals. The tracker’s responses were becoming more and more faint, as we trudged up and down the mountain.
It was hot. The foliage was thick and high. We spent hours trekking aimlessly in search of our gorilla family. I was increasingly convinced our unrelenting guide was a lunatic. And very lost.
But then, in a plot twist that I did not see coming, we suddenly intersected with the trackers. Just like that, the trackers stood in front of us with a look that I interpreted as, what took you so long? At that point the armed escorts stayed behind. Everyone else put on face masks and set off to meet the gorillas.
The protocols for gorilla interaction are strictly enforced. In addition to the face mask rule (we’re so genetically close to the gorillas they can catch our diseases), there are rules governing our distance, behaviour and time in the primate’s presence. For example, should a gorilla charge you, the rule is to squat and stand your ground. Whatever you do, we were told, don’t run.
That’s easier said than done, I learned from experience, after a female charged us.
Not long after surviving the female charge, a silverback beat his chest while storming quickly through the forest not far from where our group was positioned. He was forcefully demonstrating who’s boss. No contest there.
Of all the images that I carry from the gorilla encounters, my favourite is the mental memory of a playful child piggybacking on his mother, cheekily checking us out, while mom foraged.
Is this gorilla trekking good for the gorillas? There’s not a consensus among conservationists, but it appears that tourism has had a positive impact on Bwindi. Before the creation of the National Park in 1991, poaching was the #1 threat to the mountain gorilla population. Tourism provides an economic lifeline to the villages in the vicinity, which mitigates the incentive to poach. The mountain gorilla is still highly endangered, with a global population just over 1,000. But that number has doubled in the past 30 years. The trend is encouraging.
RWANDA LUXE
After my thrilling but treacherous trek in the impenetrable forest, I crossed the busy border into Rwanda and headed to Volcanoes National Park for two very different hikes. My national park experiences in Uganda were rugged and raw. My experience at Volcanoes was at the other end of the spectrum. In Volcanoes National Park’s main reception area, one can enjoy a complimentary high-end coffee bar, Dave Brubeck tunes in the background and individual electrical outlets above the urinals in the men’s room. It’s jungle luxe.
Dian Fossey spent the last 30 years of her life studying the mountain gorillas in Rwanda. After my own gorilla encounter, I wanted to get some texture on her dedication to this animal. There’s a swanky multimedia museum in the area funded by Ellen DeGeneres which displays Fossey’s cabin and tells her story, but I wanted to go deeper.
Going deeper meant going higher. Once again, I put on my hiking boots, and with a guide and three armed escorts (the threat here is a solitary buffalo), we ploughed up the mountain, through the mud. Fossey chose to locate her research centre and camp in a high valley between two volcanoes. It’s a beautiful location next to a creek which provides fresh water. But the whole area is a mud pit. You can sink knee-deep if you step in the wrong spot. I can’t imagine wading through that mud in the rainy season. I trekked back down the mountain with so much more appreciation for what she sacrificed and endured. But I suspect from Fossey’s perspective, it was neither a sacrifice nor endurance.
I ventured to Volcanoes National Park in search of the golden monkey, a sub-species only found in the Virunga volcanic mountains of Central Africa and known for its vibrant colouring. In my view, it’s the most attractive and photogenic monkey species, and I was hopeful that I would be able to get a close-up shot on my trek. Turns out I got too close. The monkeys, who live in social groups of up to 30 individuals, came to us. A community was tearing up a vegetable garden, just outside the park’s forest border. Golden monkeys were everywhere.
One golden monkey sauntered toward me and plopped between my legs as I stood stiffly, unsure what the protocols said about such a close encounter ‒ so much for the rule to stay at least eight metres away. The monkey had found his happy place between my legs. Walk backward slowly, a ranger advised me.
The mischievous monkey didn’t follow.
Essential info: These treks were part of a 12-day private, guided overland journey orchestrated by Ovacado Adventures from Kampala, Uganda, to Kigali, Rwanda, via six national parks. In addition to the primate and Fossey treks, in Uganda I also did multiple game drives at Murchison and Mburo National Parks, and on-foot rhino tracking at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary. In total I spotted all Big Five game in Uganda. In Rwanda I observed the singing fishermen on Lake Kivu and a canopy walk at Nyungwe National Park, Africa’s largest rainforest. In Kigali I stayed at the Hotel des Mille Collines, popularly known as the Hotel Rwanda, which today does not bear any trace of the hotel’s difficult history.
Qatar Airways links Phuket with Kigali with a one-stop connection via Doha, but the Doha-Kigali route is a codeshare operated by Air Rwanda. Many nationalities visiting any combination of Uganda, Rwanda and/or Kenya can enter on a single East Africa visa. My original plan was to also visit Burundi, but a week prior to departure the Burundi government closed its border with Rwanda. Flexibility and adaptability are essential qualities for any traveller in Africa.
Adventurer and author Todd Miller has cycled across two continents and visited all seven. He authored the Amazon bestseller ‘ENRICH: Create Wealth in Time, Money, and Meaning’, lauded by Forbes, USA Today, Entrepreneur and other global media. Todd has contributed to Fast Company, Newsweek and dozens of podcasts on work-life topics, and resides at Natai Beach. Visit: Enrich101.com