Meeting the mountain gorillas in the Volcanoes National Park of Rwanda is truly a unique experience that leaves you with a never-felt-before kind of happiness.
We must hurry up. They are moving faster, and if we miss them now, they will climb higher up the mountain and we won’t be able to catch up with them,” said Louise, our trek guide in a rushed voice. I looked down at my feet, stuck ankle-deep in the sticky mud, and prayed for it to come out of there with my shoes still on! I tugged at it hard, focussing on only one thing – not returning home without seeing the mountain gorillas.
It was barely 8am and we had already been trekking for over 30 minutes. Huffing and puffing, slipping and falling on our backs and our hands, we were bravely scaling the near-vertical slopes of an extinct volcano, now covered in a lush rainforest.
We were in the Volcanoes National Park in north-western Rwanda – one of the three places in the world where one can see the famed mountain gorillas. However, prior permits are required to visit the Park, and only 80 are handed out for a day. Our permits were graciously arranged by the Rwanda Development Board (Read Interview: page 34), Rwand Air (Read Interview: page 38), Inspiration Unlimited, and the High Commission of Rwanda.
Our adventure started from the headquarters in Kinigi, where we were sorted into groups of eight and each group was assigned a guide and a family of gorillas. The gorilla family assigned to our group was called Amahoro. The gorillas live in families, sometimes of twenty members; and yes, they have names. Every year, around the month of September, a gorilla naming ceremony is held in the Volcanoes National Park, where the locals give names to the newborn gorillas.
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