Adventure Gorilla Tours – Gorilla Trekking Safari – Rwanda, Uganda and DR Congo.

Gorilla Habituation Experience, Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda

Gorilla habituation is the slow process of getting wild mountain gorillas used to the presence of humans, turning skittish animals into groups that tolerate close observation. The Gorilla Habituation Experience is a deviation from the standard Bwindi Gorilla Trekking and offers visitors up to four hours with families engaged in habituation, whereby they have the opportunity to walk alongside researchers, trackers and rangers as they go about their work, as opposed to the rigid one-hour viewing time of the standard Bwindi Gorilla Trekking.

The process of habituation takes about two to three years. Trackers go daily to an identified family and stay with them until the gorillas stop fleeing or acting aggressively, with a steady, quiet presence. They observe each gorilla’s behaviour, vocalisations, feeding patterns and social dynamics – much more intensive than following already-habituated groups.

This is only available to tourists in one park in the whole world, Bwindi in south-western Uganda. Its thick, old rain forest made it a natural long-term research site, giving the Uganda Wildlife Authority considerable expertise in habituation. There are also about half of the world’s remaining mountain gorillas in Bwindi, so there is a pool of families to continue habituating for tourism alongside groups that have been fully habituated.

Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park and Congo’s Virunga National Park reserve permits for totally habituated families and for regular one-hour treks only. Their habituation programs are for research or conservation monitoring only, partly due to fewer available families and, in the case of Congo, security constraints.

To ensure an intimate experience, only two gorilla groups in the Rushaga and Nkuringo sectors are open at all times for visitors. Habituation permits are priced separately from standard trekking permits and need to be booked six months ahead. Bwindi remains the only place where travellers wanting more than a fleeting encounter and real insight into establishing trust with endangered great apes can get it.