Meeting the Gentle Giants

It is possible to visit groups of gorillas, with their huge dominant males, the so-called silverbacks. They can reach a height of nearly 2 meters and an impressive 220kg in weight. On a gorilla trek in the western highlands of Uganda and Rwanda, you will encounter the longer haired Mountain Gorilla, while the smaller and shorter haired Lowland Gorilla can be found further to the west in the rainforests of central Africa. The herbivorous gorillas, despite their huge size, have a much calmer temperament than chimpanzees. For most people who have been lucky enough to have tried it, a meeting with mountain gorillas is a very emotional encounter. Sitting in the midst of a family of gorillas, and looking into their gentle brown eyes is the experience of a lifetime. Even though the rules state you should not approach closer than 7 meters to these animals, this often happens, as the gorillas obviously do not know the rules, or even how long a meter is!

The pioneer of mountain gorilla research was Dian Fossey, who literally devoted her life to the gorillas of the Rwandan Volcanoes National Park, where she is buried next to the young male gorilla that she had established an especially close bond with. Her life was portrayed in the breathtaking film “Gorillas in the Mist” with Sigourney Weaver in the lead role. Dian Fossey’s methods, although controversial at times, has certainly contributed to the increase in the numbers of these endangered gorillas from around 600, at their most critical level in the 1980s, to nearly 900 today.

Nearly 500 of these mountain gorillas live amongst the volcanoes on the border between Rwanda,  D.R. Congo and Uganda, while the rest live further to the north in Uganda’s Bwindi Forest.  They live in family groups, led by an adult male known as a silverback. The group may also contain one or more younger males, known as black backs, 10 -12 females and a number of juveniles. The gorillas move around a large territory in their search for fresh plants to eat. They build nests in the vegetation where they spend the night - constructing a new one every night. These nests are important way markers for the expert local guides, who track the groups of gorillas on the morning before a gorilla trek.