Backpacker on a Wheelchair Tracks Gorillas



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Neil Bye and Annette Hudspeth during their African journey
Neil Bye and Annette Hudspeth during their African journey

Despite the anything-but-insignificant cost and physical strain of tracking mountain gorillas, this is an encounter many people feel they definitely have to experience. Even the disabled.

Sunday Ndayakunze, the tourism warden of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, says that on average once a month they get a gorilla tracker who needs assistance. A visitor with disabilities needs to negotiate with the porters’ chairperson, and decide between a stretcher and a sedan chair ($50 extra). There is no problem whatsoever, everyone can be carried into the forest, but the cost of the privilege will depend on the distance, terrain and the client’s weight (all influencing the number of porters needed). The final cost will be between 100 and 300 dollars.

Sedan chair for tracking mountain gorillas; photo by Sanctuary Retreats
Sedan chair for tracking mountain gorillas; photo by Sanctuary Retreats

The sedan chairs are borrowed from Gorilla Forest Camp in Buhoma, so it makes sense to arrange for them the day before. Clients satisfied with the stretcher do not need to complicate anything, all they have to do is to come to the morning gorilla tracking briefing. Stretchers are available at all national park gates.

Neil Bye, 56, a British web designer on a wheelchair who cannot walk a step without assistance, confirms this. Two years ago he backpacked through Uganda together with his wife Annette Hudspeth, 57, while making an overland journey from Cairo to Livingstone. They also learned that you shouldn’t waste your time announcing yourself through the Uganda Wildlife Authority HQ as nobody in Bwindi knew anything about it.

This is how Neil narrates the details:

Before we could visit Bwindi we had to pick up our permits from the Uganda Wildlife Authority office in Kampala. We left the busy city in the evening on the Savanna bus to Kihihi. I tried to sleep but it was uncomfy, cold and noisy. Sometime in the middle of the night we had a very hectic bus change in Rukungiri. The new driver was reckless and we blew a tyre on a bridge. Then a few miles further on the clutch went… We were stranded in the jungle just as it was getting light. Someone summoned a car which took seven of us. We arrived at Buhoma Community Rest Camp at 9:15am, had breakfast and then two guys helped me down the path to our tent. We were deep in the rainforest, with views over a steep sided, wooded valley. We slept until 4pm and then had a lazy evening at the camp; I mended the brake on my wheelchair.

The next day we were up at 7am. After a quick breakfast I wheeled to the gorilla briefing point, watched a film about gorillas and heard advice on behaviour around gorillas. I was loaded onto a sedan chair, two metal poles with a seat slung between them. It was like riding a horse.
We set off into the forest with a group of about eight people. After a while clambering over streams in the jungle we came upon two trackers who told us about the gorillas nearby. Two porters supported me as we walked nearer to the group.

Mountain gorilla sighting; photo by Neil Bye
Mountain gorilla sighting; photo by Neil Bye

We saw the silverback, first turned away from us nonchalantly chewing a shoot. We eased past him and a short walk took us to the family. There were three females, two on the ground on of which had a baby, and one up a tree. The baby was the star of the show and he knew it. He was all over his mother trying to grab branches and falling down. The others were quite the opposite, indolently lolling about without a care in the world. The silverback came over to see what was happening, he looked me right in the eye. One of the females moved towards us being curious. We were told to move back and she looked disappointed. I managed to stand (supported) for the whole hour we we there. The journey back was downhill and therefore much quicker. We were all given certificates.

We stayed one more day at the camp, then moved to the cheaper Bwindi Travellers Hotel. The rooms were very basic but we had a lovely meal of beans, rice, plantain and avocado. We left there at 2.30am in a pickup which took us through the Impenetrable Forest. It was so loaded with mangoes everyone had to get out and push on hills.