Gorilla Tracking and Nkuringo Gorilla Lodge

January 15, 2026 from the itinerary: After breakfast, with a packed lunch, depart the beautiful area of Queen Elizabeth National Park and drive to the Buhoma Sector of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park (approximately 2 hours / 157 km).

In Buhoma, located on the northern side of the park, you will meet your Nkuringo Walking

Safari guide and begin a guided walk through the impenetrable forest, crossing from north to

south along the Ivy River Trail, a scenic 13 km route taking approximately 4–5 hours.

At Nteko Ridge, you’ll meet your vehicle and continue the final 7 km drive to Nkuringo Gorilla

Lodge where you'll check in for a 2-night stay. Your safari guide will meanwhile drive around to the lodge and will meet you there, so it's recommended that you carry a day pack as chances are good that you will arrive at the lodge before him.

January 16, 2026 - travel to After breakfast, at around 7:30 am, with packed lunch and drinking water, you will be transferred to the National Park Headquarters for a briefing on the dos and don’ts while with the gorillas. You will then continue into the forest for the start of the gorilla tracking accompanied by experienced escorts, guides, and rangers from the Uganda Wildlife Authority. Once the gorillas are found, you’ll spend one hour quietly observing and photographing these remarkable primates before hiking back through the forest. Evening is at leisure.

Today is election day and there is no internet. They actually cut it off a couple days ago and a bit earlier than we all thought. None of our lodges to date have really had a wifi that worked well, but I don't really mind as this is all part of the adventure. The Internet is turned off by the ruling party and they are trying to avoid election-related violence (which is expected in the bigger cities). We expect it to be off at least until the presidential results are determined which will take probably 3 days. Internet might be off longer if the incumbent loses and they have to "cook" the results. The MP election results are in today and the opposition has won in most of the country.  

We certainly heard more of Happy the Hippo as we awoke and went to breakfast. There we saw a lovely sunrise and also several hippos crossing the river.

We had a long, kidney bruising drive along terrible roads for several hours.  Along the way we got a good look at a Vereaux's Eagle Owl and several Black-and-White Colobus Monkeys.

John, you may remember was having terrible intestinal issues, is feeling better. I would hate to take this drive with any sort of digestive problems.  The route climbed up to the ridge, about 3000 feet to 7000 feet. We passed by Oscar's house along the way and also got a look at town life on election day, including voting places.

and we finally arrived into the hills and the Impenetrable National Forest which was the stop for today's jungle walk. This walk was a short cut. Had we not done it, we would have been going over more terrible roads around the forest.

This area is very close to the Congo border which you can see from the map and our mobile carriers.

It started as a lovely hike along along a well marked trail and up to a ridge. You could see the biting ants and some lovely flowers. We ended up for a break at the top and then again at the bottom at the river. At this point it was the peak of the heat and we had to walk up about 1500 feet. The walk was only about 6.5 miles, but the last uphill killed me. In addition, I was out of water, not knowing the last uphill was coming.

We met back up with the cars and drove the last way to the lovely, cool Nkuringo Gorilla Lodge. We had a lovely, big room looking over the valley with a fire place and decided this is the best lodge yet on the trip.

When we arrived we were treated to, not only hot towels and a welcome drink, but a hand massage. I think John was ready to propose marriage to the therapist....

We were to find out that Rob, Vena and Lisa all seemed to have contracted "John's illness" which was thought to be dysentery; although, not confirmed by a doctor. Thank goodness for Imodium and antibiotics.  It appears to run it's course in about 24-36 hours. Not very nice for the three of them. By the evening Ann also seemed to have some symptoms.

Sunset was a very pretty time at this property

At the 7:30 pm briefing for the gorilla tracking and I started to get quite stressed. After today's experience, I didn’t feel confident I would be able to walk up and down the steep mountains for a possible 8 hour tracking experience.  I lost quite a bit of sleep.

There was a lovely fire in our room which helped take my mind off tomorrow’s “experience”.

16 - Gorilla tracking

Up early again to prepare for the big day of guerrilla tracking and sunrise is also a very special time at Nkuringo.

At breakfast we found out that only Chris, Chris and I have been spared the dysentery-like illness.

Off to a 5 minute ride to the Gorilla centre for a 2 minute walk to start our experience…. Or so we thought.  Upon arrival we were told to see the community show which included singing and making fire without matches.  We were told we could “show our appreciation” after the show. 

Now it was time for a briefing where we were told we needed at least 2 litres of water which would have been good to know earlier before we left the Lodge.

Then it was time to start our trekking - or so we thought.  Now it was time for a 30 minute drive over bad roads to the start of the experience.  So what I thought was going to start at 8am was actually starting about 9am.  The words to Vena’s new refrain are “3 hours later” because Uganda uses a different standard of time and must repeat all communication at least 3 times.

The porters - come to find out the night before that porters are available and encouraged to help the community.  Some previous poachers now work as porters.  By this time Chris and I started to feel “tip fatigue” and were wondering how much more we would be asked to pay to help the community.

So before leaving on the 30 minute bone jarring drive to the trail head, we were the only hold outs on porters.  The hike started through the buffer zone between the community and the forest - this was the tea plantation.  It seems tea is not eaten by any animal, so it made a good buffer to keep bad animals from entering the community and disrupting crop production.

Gorilla Experience

Another new fact - tea plants do not have flexible stems.  If you walk into them you will break your shin.   I am just happy to be off Plavix as I ran into several of them. 

We walked down to the river only to find out this was the same bridge we crossed yesterday before the long, hot walk up to the community.  The good news was the guerrillas were close by, as they only average 1km of movement a day and they were seen in this area only the day before.  We waited under the sun shades for about 40 minutes until we got the go ahead to continue with Vena’s refrain in our minds.

We began the trek on a path along side the river through the jungle.  This was quite nice and we were shown spoor of gorillas along the way.  Then my heart stopped when it appeared we were going to cross the swift river without aid of a bridge.  I thought also without aid of the porters.  Chris flat out had a sense of humour failure and refused to cross the river.  Turns out the porters were to carry us across the river.  Chris still refused, but eventually gave in. I was quite concerned on 2 fronts - I had no water proof option for my phone and the man who carried me across did so in bare feet over slippery rocks.

We made it across and found the gorillas - a group of 14 of which we saw 8.  I was most impressed by the number of small babies.  I really enjoyed watching them bang their chests and grunting.  Their grunts vibrated inside my body.  

Again with the tip fatigue as we were reminded to show our appreciation to the trackers, guide, and body guards.  I forgot to say we had 2 “body guards” with Russian rifles who came with us to shoot above any charging elephants, guerrillas, water buffalo, etc.  We were wondering if these guys actually knew how to use their weapons, but thankfully we didn’t have to find out.

Amazingly we were able to return without crossing the river and the walk up to the community was a bit easier than yesterday’s.  Most annoying was that they were able to drive us up the terribly hot road we were made to walk up yesterday and I was glad not to have tipped anyone yesterday.  It was quite an adventure.  I offered tips to Vena’s porter - a lady who watched my pack while I was watching the guerrillas - and the poor man who carried me across the river.  Vena’s porter didn’t offer to carry anyone across.

In addition to tip fatigue, we had road fatigue and small child fatigue.  The roads were so bad I felt more beaten up after any length of journey that I would have preferred walking up any of the roads through the heat of the day.  The small children trying to say hello, sell guerrilla drawings, look at buni, became very tiresome.  The families here seem less successful.  Many of the children had torn clothes.

We made it back just in time for a late lunch - I was thankful as I only had yogurt for breakfast.  Deconstructed chicken stroganoff was my choice and it was very nice.  I seem to be on a tobasco sauce kick and everything seemed better with it, including the stroganoff.

After 4 hours off we came back for dinner and sleep.