Majestic Beasts in Bwindi Gorillas: Such power! Such majesty! Such beasts!
Majestic Beasts in Bwindi With just a handful left on the planet, gorillas are certainly worth a visit, a sight to behold.
Gorilla trekking is certainly a must for every lover of nature out there. It is estimated that a fully
grown male gorilla has the strength of ten men combined. Even on screen, in documentaries
and movies, these beautiful beings are awe-inspiring, if not fear-inspiring. Seeing them up close
and personal is a memory of a lifetime. But what exactly is gorilla trekking?
Come.
Gorilla Trekking
This is an activity that involves hiking through dense forests in search of gorillas. This
involves walking through steep hills, forests, and streams of water to find a family of gorillas,
with the help of a well-trained ranger, who will keep you and the gorillas safe from each other.
To see creatures behave in ways that mimic ours is an almost therapeutic experience. It is costly,
but definitely worth it. If we can spend some money to watch them on screen, why not
physically, in close proximity?
Majestic Beasts in Bwindi
This activity is one of the most popular activities for you and your
family to enjoy. Uganda has them concentrated in the far southwest corner, especially in the
massive Bwindi Impenetrable forest, home to around half of the world’s 900 surviving mountain
gorillas. Another park for trekking is the Mgahinga National Park, also tucked away in the far
southwestern corner of Uganda. Uganda boasts some 13 family groups of gorillas, with 12 in
Bwindi and the other one in Mgahinga national parks respectively.
You will be advised to sleep early, wake up early and have a cup of coffee, after which you will
be led to the headquarters of the park, where rangers will brief you on what to do and what not to
do while trekking.
You will be divided into several groups and will be led by different tour guides to where they
most expect the families to be. Locating them can take between one to around seven hours,
because the families move to different spots in the dense forests, looking for food, water, and
shelter for their families. Early morning trackers who go to the forests prior to your trekking
journey make it easier for you to see them.
As soon as they are located, you are kindly asked to leave your luggage behind, and only carry a
camera, but not to use flashlights, as they might agitate the gorillas, just like you’d be irritated by
the flashlights of a tenacious paparazzo. You will be reminded to keep a safe distance from them
and avoid direct eye contact because they might want to assert their dominance if you intimidate
