6-Day Classic Primate Sampler: Uganda and Rwanda

Your driver-guide is waiting just past customs at Kigali International Airport, for the drive to Kinigi, under two hours on well-maintained roads through Rwanda’s terraced “thousand hills” countryside. Evening trekking briefing on arrival.

A lower-altitude trek into the park’s bamboo zone, considerably gentler than the gorilla trek to come, to find a troop of golden monkeys — fast-moving, acrobatic, and constantly chasing each other through the bamboo canopy, a species found only in this stretch of the Albertine Rift.

As above

A 6am wake-up for the 7am briefing opening with a performance by the Kinigi intore dancers, then the trek itself through increasingly misty forest on the volcanic slopes and a strict hour with your gorilla family.

As above

The drive to the Cyanika border crossing takes under an hour from Kinigi, a standard land-border process generally under an hour, before a Uganda-based driver-guide continues you on to Bwindi.

7:30am briefing at park headquarters, then the trek itself through dense rainforest, followed by a strict hour with your second gorilla family. The afternoon shifts pace entirely: a guided Batwa cultural encounter, led by community members who lived in Bwindi as forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers before the park’s creation for gorilla conservation displaced them in the early 1990s — traditional songs, storytelling and a demonstration of forest survival skills passed down through generations.

As above

A short drive to Kihihi or Kisoro airstrip for a scheduled light aircraft flight to Entebbe, roughly ninety minutes, connecting to your onward international flight.