Rwanda bird watching holiday and gorilla trek
Contact us for luxury lodging. The pricing includes permits - Gorilla, chimp & Colobus This itinerary is customisable and departs anytime of the year.
Extension Tours are available.
Description of Rwanda bird watching holiday and gorilla trek
This exceptional Rwanda bird watching holiday ventures to no fewer than three national parks, meaning you’ll enjoy abundant opportunities to find a wide range of species. Particularly as you’ll be assisted by expert local guides, adept at identifying the best places for sightings.
And, as well as bird watching, you’ll enjoy a day tracking chimpanzees in Nyungwe Forest National Park, and trek out to see the mountain gorillas of Volcanoes National Park. There are some remarkable, unforgettable encounters to be had among man’s closest cousins, and the slow-moving grace of the gorillas will make a stunning contrast to the colourful activity of Rwanda’s ample birdlife.
Ensuring that you make the most of your time on holiday, you’ll spend a day birding in the wetlands and forested areas around the capital, Kigali, before moving on to Akagera National Park, 110km to the east. Here long-crested eagles, pied crows and augur buzzards can be seen amongst a wealth of other species. Staying at a lodge, you might also catch sight of buffaloes, zebras, and elephants.
Travelling back southwest to Nyungwe Forest National Park is a full-day journey that will be punctuated with frequent birding stops in roadside swamps. As much of the birding on this trip takes place beyond the environs of officially protected areas, your holiday helps with conservation through encouraging local communities to benefit from tourism by protecting birdlife.
With its montane forests providing ideal habitat for many species, Nyungwe Forest National Park is particularly rich in birdlife. Handsome francolins, chestnut owlets and regal sunbirds are just a tiny handful of the characters you might track down here.
Permits for chimp-trekking and gorilla tracking, in Nyungwe Forest and Volcanoes National Park respectively, are included. The terrain can be challenging in places, though porters will be available if required. Your efforts will be more than rewarded however, as these are two of the great bucket-list wildlife experiences. You’ll spend only an hour with the gorillas, but you’ll remember every moment for years to come.
Volcanoes National Park, where Dian Fossey began her gorilla research, and the final destination of this holiday, is another fantastic birding spot, with many trails taking you deep into the forests. You’ll spend a few days here, allowing you to tick plenty more sightings off your list, before heading back to Kigali. But not before a short visit to a ‘gorilla guardians village’ where you can learn about efforts to protect these gentle giants of the jungle, and how your holiday directly helps with their conservation.
Price information
Contact us for luxury lodging. The pricing includes permits - Gorilla, chimp & Colobus This itinerary is customisable and departs anytime of the year.
Extension Tours are available.
Departure information
Travel guides
Reviews
2 Reviews of Rwanda bird watching holiday and gorilla trek
Reviewed on 13 Sep 2024 by Linda Green
1. What was the most memorable or exciting part of your holiday?
Highlights included seeing the gorillas and golden monkeys, watching a pride of lions ravenously eating their kill, seeing a Shoebill, cycling through villages in Rwanda, climbing Mount Sabinyo.
2. What tips would you give other travellers booking this holiday?
Miriam, who runs the host company, is fantastic - best organised holiday ever.
3. Did you feel that your holiday benefited local people, reduced environmental impacts or supported conservation?
Although we had the fabulous Frank as our guide and driver throughout, we also used local guides, stayed in national parks and visited a number of local
initiatives supporting villages. We met Dr Scott Kellerman who, together with his wife Carol, has built up at amazing community hospital at Bwindi.
4. Finally, how would you rate your holiday overall?
One of the best we have had - extremely well organised and a great guide/driver with incredible knowledge of birding and wildlife as well as the history, etc, of
both Uganda and Rwanda. We learnt such a lot from Frank and nothing was a problem including changing the itinerary both before and during the trip.
Reviewed on 16 Jun 2023 by Gina G
1. What was the most memorable or exciting part of your holiday?
Visiting the genocide museum, seeing the mountain gorillas, meeting the local people, the weather and seeing over 200 birds.
2. What tips would you give other travellers booking this holiday?
Tip well to make a positive impact in the community. Let the tour company know if you want to add something or change something, they are very flexible.
3. Did you feel that your holiday benefited local people, reduced environmental impacts or supported conservation?
Absolutely, I got 2-3 porters for each of the walks, tracking.
4. Finally, how would you rate your holiday overall?
Excellent. The tour operator organized a memorable trip, accomodations were great, food was awesome, guide was extremely knowledgeable, and I rated this trip/Rwanda one of my top 3 out of 46 countries.
Responsible Travel
Planet
1. Wildlife in Rwanda is protected by the Rwanda development board in close connection with African parks that runs Akagera national park and Nyungwe national park. For clients visit to the parks, conservation fees are paid and these are used to protect and conserve the parks. In addition to this, often include a visit to the communities adjacent to the parks to ensure they benefit directly and therefore join in conservation. There is a tea plantation experience near Nyungwe forest and gorilla guardians village adjacent to Volcanoes national park.2. Some of the birding activities will be outside of the national parks in areas that have been conserved to encourage birding especially in the Kigali area. Birding Umusambi village in Kigali contributes to restoration of this wetland and conservation of several birds.
3. Just like all our tours, we minimize trash on our safaris by encouraging travelers to reuse different materials. We provide/ encourage travelers to carry reusable water bottles. This is because we no longer buy the small disposable water cartons but rather the bigger bottles that then ensure minimum plastic and trash on our tours. Whatever rubbish generated while on safari must be retained in the car and safely disposed of by the driver guide.
People
1. Our guides are locals in the countries we work in. We also encourage them where applicable to get a site guide in the different areas they take our guests. For the tea plantation experience and Gorilla guardians experience, our naturalist guide will be in the background as the community guides take over. This helps with spreading the tourism dollar to many more people on the value chain.2. We respect the local cultures of the communities we visit, we are not intrusive in our approach. We ask locals to let us know what is comfortable for them as far as bringing tourists into their villages, homes etc. We together make a trail for an experience they are comfortable with. We call ahead and plan everything based on the locals/hosts preferred times and activities and if for some reason they are not able to host us after prior confirmation, we inform the clients in time and choose a different activity.
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