Bwindi

Bwindi is a forest that earned its name — impenetrable — and it holds, in three hundred and thirty square kilometres of tangled montane rainforest on the edge of the Albertine Rift in Uganda's south-west, close to half of all the mountain gorillas left on Earth: some four hundred and sixty of a little more than a thousand. A UNESCO site since 1994, it is entered from four sectors, each with its habituated families and its lodges: Buhoma in the north, the first, open since 1993, with its community hospital and its walks; Ruhija in the east, high and cold at two thousand three hundred and fifty metres, the birders' sector; Rushaga in the south, with the most families and the four-hour habituation experience; and Nkuringo in the south-west, steep, with the Virunga volcanoes on the horizon. Around it live the Bakiga farmers and the Batwa, the forest's first people, who lead a trail through the trees they were moved out of; the airstrips are at Kihihi and Kisoro, and Kampala is nine hours away by road.

The traveller books the permit months ahead — through an operator, or the wildlife authority — chooses the sector by it, and comes the day before, because the briefing is at eight in the morning: the walk in, one to six hours through the tangle behind the trackers and with a porter who is worth every shilling, the last hundred metres in silence, and then the hour — a silverback chewing, the young wrestling in the leaves, a mother's eyes — that ends when the guide says so; the afternoon for a forest walk, the waterfalls at Buhoma or the community trails; a second morning, with the permit and the means, for the habituation experience at Rushaga; the Batwa trail, walked with respect; and, if the road allows, Lake Bunyonyi on the way in or out, for the swim and the terraces.

The Guide's honesty: the permit is the price of the page — several hundred dollars, non-refundable, and sold out in the dry months a year ahead —, and the trek is real walking on steep, wet ground at altitude, for which the traveller trains a little and hires a porter without pride; masks are worn with the gorillas, distances kept, and anyone with a cold stays in the lodge, because a human virus can kill a family; the roads to the sectors are long and rough, and the flight to Kihihi or Kisoro buys a day; Uganda's welcome is warm and its rules are firm; and the hour with the gorillas is, by common consent of everyone who has had it, among the hours of a life, which is why the Guide keeps this page plainly and gladly.