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Marhale and His Gift of Joy
📁 GorillasOne of the most rewarding parts of studying the social behaviour of animals is getting to know individuals and watching their personalities come through. For gorillas, we begin identifying each one using a variety of characteristics, such as unique nose prints, ear shape, and scars. For example, notice the notches on Pilipili’s ear and the…
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Batwa “Pygmies”: History and Present
The Batwa “Pygmies” are one of the oldest peoples in Africa and their origin is unknown. They were hunter-gatherers, roaming the forests in bands foraging for honey, wild yams, fruit, stems and tubers, and hunting small game with trained dogs. They were highly skilled bowmen. Today, the Batwa live as a unified group mainly in people’s imagination. In all the three countries of our region,…
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Top 5 Prettiest Lakes of the Gorilla Highlands Region
From the ice-cold waters between Rwanda and Uganda atop Mt Muhabura to the colourful bays of Bukavu, the Gorilla Highlands region is blessed with numerous bodies of water. You can safely swim in all of them — but which lakes are the most beautiful? 1. Lake Bunyonyi This giraffe-shaped lake is made exceptionally gorgeous by the heavily terraced hills that…
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I Tasted the Brand New 2-Day Muhabura Hike
Dear readers of the Daily Dose,In my first report from Mgahinga Gorilla National Park I told you that we were preparing to make hiking Mt Muhabura (4,127 m/ 13,540 ft) more accessible. The highest of the three volcanic mountains that our park boasts, it is the preferred climb by seasoned climbers who summit and descend…
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Who Is Marcus Westberg, the Star of Our Live Q&A?
In early 2012 the Gorilla Highlands team faced a photography crisis. We were making an interactive ebook and felt dismay browsing through our photo libraries. We just didn’t have enough decent material. That’s when Marcus Westberg emailed us. With his assistance the ebook ended up winning a global award but more significantly, Marcus kept returning.Almost a full decade later, Marcus will…
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Experience Farming Life at a Very Unusual Location
Looking at the picture above, would you ever expect it to be taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo? Well, it is!Farm vacations are well known around the world and attract people who want to escape from busy work life or families who enjoy spending a weekend in nature, but the DR Congo might not…
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How Human are Gorillas?
📁 GorillasResearchers are often struck by gorillas’ apparent humanity. Taking into account our genetic similarities of 95% or above, there has been a long debate about how close humans and gorillas really are.George Schaller — one of the world’s most preeminent field biologists —travelled to the Virunga Volcanoes in the 1960s, at age 26, to study…
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Era of Regular In-Sights Begins
When the concept of Gorilla Highlands Experts was finalised almost a year ago, it was based on In-Sights. That was the name we chose for something creative and insightful to be built on an online course platform. We didn’t want it to feel like school, just use the format of “lessons” building upon each other.In…
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How a Musical Trailblazer Realised He Had Ambitions
Hello everyone! My name is Joe Kahiri, I am a musician and you first saw me on the Gorilla Highlands Experts platform when I was performing at the second Online Picnic. I am the founder of the Afro-Fusion band Qwela and I organise Qwela Junction, where I host different artists who would otherwise not have…
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Walk-In Theatre
24mm, 30s, f/4, ISO2500 Back in early 2016 we spent a night camping with our Batwa friends at the outskirts of Echuya forest. The highlight was undoubtedly the cinema experience we put on during the evening, sharing a video made by the Gorilla Highlands team about the region and what it had to offer, including…
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Dawn of Gorilla Tracking as a Tourism Activity
While there were sporadic non-scientific expeditions to mountain gorillas before, real tourism began with the arrival of Walter Baumgartel. Baumgartel was a German who had lived in South Africa, helped the British with reconnaissance photography during World War II, and eventually found an enticing ad in London: they were looking for somebody interested in a…
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Harvesting Season Has Finally Arrived
The month of May is arriving and so it is finally time to harvest our coffee. Growing up on a coffee farm I always loved harvesting time. We woke up very early to find a field full of red berries.We would start with laying down a tarpaulin sheet to reduce spillages and prevent dirt from…
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The Battle of the Great Apes: Gorillas versus Chimpanzees
When I learned I was going to do an internship in Uganda for six months, I immediately started researching the country and its highlights. Naturally, one of the first things that came up was gorilla tracking. I remember opening the page, scrolling through it and getting excited, until I saw the price tag and realised…
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How I Became a Travel Blogger Living In Uganda
Hello there! My name is Charlotte Beauvoisin and I am a British expat currently living in a wooden house on the edge of Kibale Forest National Park, Uganda. The park is famous for its population of chimpanzees that I can hear pant hooting — their particular form of communicating — from my window. Kibale also…
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Ancient Relic
500mm, 1/640s, f/5, ISO250 Believe it or not, this is one of the region’s stars – at least for avid bird-watchers. The shoebill (sometimes known as the whale-headed stork) is a particularly prehistoric-looking bird found in swamps and wetlands throughout central Africa, but because of habitat destruction and hunting there are only between 5000 and…
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Travel Advisory for the Democratic Republic of Congo: Insider Info & Superb Images
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a challenging place in many ways. It is best known internationally for poverty, civil war and Ebola. At the same time, it is also a land of opportunity. The population is rapidly growing (it has passed 80 million), GDP is on the march, there is an increasing…
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Groups: Why We Have Them & How To Enjoy Them
We strive to serve you a vast variety of content on the Gorilla Highlands Experts platform, but sometimes you may want more of what especially touches you.That’s why we have groups for our members! Want to identify a bird you just saw? Ask your fellow Birders. The group leader is Charlotte who wrote in her…
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We Are In the Washington Post
We interrupt our regular programming because having an article about us published in the Washington Post is a big deal. It had taken many years to make something like this happen!Henry Wismayer, the article author, has been to our region several times. He even met Marcus Westberg here, our photographer who would become his frequent…
News & Stories Blog
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