There’s a reason the film wasn’t called Gorillas in the Dazzling Sunshine. My first view of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest was of a wall of foliage climbing the valley wall opposite, wreathed in skeins of spectral blue mist. The knowledge that the following day I would be setting off into the jungle on foot to search for mountain gorillas was thrilling.

I had booked my permit in advance – but not dramatically so. The whole trip to Uganda was fairly last minute and so I had only made my reservation a month ahead of time. There was the risk that all the permits would have been sold out. I was lucky. With hindsight, starting from Buhoma gave me the best chance of getting a place. At the time of my travel there were seven groups of Mountain Gorillas ‘habituated’ to human presence. One is in the southern Mgahinga Gorilla National Park (on the Tentative List) and the other six are located in Bwindi. There are four trailheads. From Ruhija in the east of the park the Bitakura group can be tracked. From Rushaga in the south the Shongi group can be tracked. Els visited Nkuringo in the south west, from where the Nkuringo group can be tracked. And in the north-west, from Buhoma, three groups – Mubare, Rushegura and Habinyanja – can be tracked. Buhoma was therefore ‘Gorilla Central’ and this was where I stayed in some community-run bandas just within the park gates.

When I arrived at the park HQ the next morning trackers were already out scouting for the gorillas, radioing their position back to the HQ. Permits were inspected and then people were divided into groups. One group was only taken back up the road to Buhoma because the gorilla group they were assigned was currently in the gardens of a hotel. Thankfully I avoided that anti-climax. Instead I and six other people were assigned the Habinyanja group who were over the other side of the hills. Their location was a stiff three hour walk from the HQ – or a one hour drive plus a 45 minute walk. Even those 45 minutes were pretty strenuous. Where we entered the forest was not thick canopy forest. Instead it was a mesh of saplings and thin young trees, the ground carpeted in brush and thorns. We needed to hack our way through the undergrowth and descend treacherous slopes. The way was damp, the air heavy with the smell of decomposing leaf matter. We caught up with the two trackers, stripped off our bags, and emerged blinking into a large sloping meadow of stomach-high ferns.

Whereupon a large silverback emerged from behind a tree to my left and ambled away.

We had been instructed to not get any nearer to a gorilla than seven metres. I don’t think the gorillas had the same briefing. Over the next hour several gorillas ended up within a couple of metres of me. I was astonished by how placid they were. They sat, chomping on leaves and bamboo, scratching and grunting. All too infrequently they would appraise us with their big brown eyes. It is always a risk to humanise wild animals but there was definite intelligence in their gazes. They were magnificent – the word I used with the guides was ‘beautiful’. I felt incredibly privileged and humbled that the gorillas had let me enter their world as a guest. And I was also saddened. For in the space of just one hour I had seen approximately 2.5% of the entire global population of mountain gorillas.

Walking back to where we had left our vehicles I reflected on the risks the gorillas face. Crop fields of millet and tea ran right up to the edge of the forest. The gorillas do not remain within the invisible walls of the National Park and can often stray into those farmlands, causing conflict. Still, their presence does bring money into this obviously poor area of south-west Uganda. In Buhoma the park authorities had erected large signs thanking the gorillas for bringing the tourists and their money, and hence the schools, clinics and houses.

Obviously, there is more to see in Bwindi than just gorillas. I saw more of it on a short walk along a trail that afternoon and then the following day driving down to Kabale on a treacherous road that fringed the northern edge of the park and crossed through sections at ‘the neck’ and then again south of Ruhija. Prime attractions were other primates (red-tailed monkeys, black and white colobuses and the vulnerable L’Hoests monkeys), birds (yellow weaverbirds, cinnamon-chested bee-eaters, pin-tailed whydahs, sunbirds, cuckoos, wagtails and a flock of dozens of grey crowned cranes, Uganda’s national bird) and a spectacular three-horned chameleon.

The Bwindi rainforest may not be truly impenetrable, but it is an awe-inspiring example of Afromontane forest. The concentration of flora and fauna is mind-boggling. It would be well deserving of inscription even if it did not support half the world’s population of mountain gorillas.

World Heritage-iness: 5

My Experience: 5

(Visited Dec 2011)