About Bwindi Impenetrable National Park
Bwindi is 331 km² of tangled, mist-wrapped rainforest on the edge of the Albertine Rift — and home to roughly half of the world’s remaining mountain gorillas. Trekking here means a real hike: steep, muddy, thick with vines, through forest that has barely changed in 25,000 years. Then, without much warning, a family of gorillas is simply there, a few metres away, entirely unbothered by you.
Permits are issued for a fixed number of gorilla families a day, each visited by one small group for a strictly timed hour once found. Trackers go ahead at dawn; you follow once the family is located, anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours into the forest.
Bwindi is also one of Africa’s richest birding forests — over 350 species, including a long list found nowhere else — and the community walks around Buhoma and Nkuringo add batwa cultural history and forest-edge village life to a trip built mostly around the trek.
