Bwindi gorilla trekking

Half the world's remaining mountain gorillas live in Bwindi. An hour with a habituated family is the single most expensive and most remembered morning of most people's trip.

Bwindi is a long day's drive south, so this runs as a two- or three-day leg — usually paired with Queen Elizabeth on the way down or back, which costs you nothing extra in driving.

The trek itself is unpredictable: it can be ninety minutes or it can be seven hours, steep and wet either way. The hour you get at the end is fixed and strictly enforced, and it is worth every part of the climb.

Permits are dated, capped and expensive, and high-season dates go months in advance. This is the one part of a Uganda trip that genuinely cannot be arranged at the last minute.