Gorilla trekking in Rwanda

Volcanoes National Park — Parc National des Volcans — spreads across the Virunga chain in Rwanda's far northwest, a wall of green volcanoes rising above four thousand metres on the borders with Congo and Uganda. This is the forest Dian Fossey worked in, and where the mountain gorilla, once counted in the low hundreds, has been brought back from the edge by the strictest conservation regime on the continent. The permit costs more than anything else on the list precisely because scarcity is the plan: a fixed number issued each day, one hour with the animals and no longer. The day starts early at the park headquarters at Kinigi, with coffee, drumming and the assignment of groups. You are placed with one habituated gorilla family and set off with trackers who have followed them since dawn. The walk can be short or can be three hours of steep, muddy climbing through nettles and bamboo at altitude, hauling yourself up on roots while a porter — worth every note you pay him — carries your bag and steadies your arm. Then the trackers stop, you leave your poles and packs behind, and you step through the last of the vegetation into the family. What happens in the hour that follows is difficult to convey and impossible to forget. A silverback the weight of two men lies an arm's length away, wholly unbothered; juveniles tumble and beat their chests in miniature; an infant studies you with an attention you feel in your chest. The eye contact is the thing. There is recognition in it, and it does not let you go afterwards. The rules are firm and exist for good reason: seven metres' distance where the terrain allows, no visiting with any illness, masks to protect animals that share almost all of our DNA and our diseases with them. The minimum age is fifteen. Come in the drier months for firmer ground, though this is rainforest and mud is always part of the bargain. Book the permit far ahead through the Rwanda Development Board or a licensed operator; it is non-negotiable and non-refundable, so build the trip around the date you secure. Few hours cost so much or return so much.