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What Do Gorillas Think of Face Masks?
📁 GorillasHello, my dears? Are you still there?For me, I am still with you, trust me!The reason why you haven’t heard from me for a while is that I was busy busy busy working with two different TV crews. They wanted to capture the best of Volcanoes National Park — and when you work with camera…
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Mountain Misery
24mm, f/5, 1/200s, ISO500 We’re used to seeing happy travel shots, but sometimes honesty can be refreshing. This image is from a Gorilla Highlands media trip in late 2015, from the third and highest peak of Mt Sabyinyo. We’d gotten the Uganda Wildlife Authority to agree to a special boon: camping on the volcano! That…
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Tom’s Timeless Tale
Tom Karemire really is a living legend around Lake Bunyonyi — ask any lake-dwellers and they will tell you a story about him. At age 76 , he is still walking the hilly Kabale district landscape like a young foal, smiling and joking with all passersby, from older women to youngsters. Tom is the owner…
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Man of Many Hats Makes It Home at Last
This is the sequel to Borderline Adventures that takes us deeper into Uganda and delivers me to my Lake Bunyonyi home… As fabulously fertile as volcanic soil is, it is also painfully porous — I saw people fetching water from communal sources again and again, as the boda boda that Gerald arranged for me was…
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Borderline Adventure of the Man of Many Hats
Dear readers and watchers,Warm greetings from a simple man who does wear many hats… You have previously read about me as a founder in female clothes, learned about me as a lonely videographer and watched me as a dad deeply proud of the school his kiddos attend.Primarily, however, I will be your tour consultant and…
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Complex Social Lives of Mountain Gorillas (Including Sex)
📁 GorillasWho Can Be a Silverback? A silverback is an adult male gorilla, typically over 12 years old and named for the distinctive patch of silver hair on his back. They have large canine teeth that come with maturity. Silverbacks are the strong, dominant troop leaders but not all have this position; some may have never…
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Three-in-One
200mm, 1/400s, f/8, ISO250What do I mean by that title? Well, to me, this image tells three different stories, which is always useful for a professional photographer like myself. The first is perhaps the most obvious: this is a tree-climbing lion, which is a relatively rare sight (though not in Ishasha, part of Queen Elizabeth…
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Pablo (1 February 1955 – 12 April 2021)
Paul “Pablo” Ryckaert Timbao was a role model, a friend who changed our community, an advisor, a good employer paying good salaries — and the person who put Lake Bunyonyi on the map by founding BirdNest Resort!Before Pablo’s arrival to our community, there was just an ugly ruin on the only road, a visitor’s first…
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Preparing for a Week of Trekking in Uganda
📁 HikingRob’s boys are prepping. At the end of May they will be doing the Ultimate Hike, the special combination of the Volcano Quest and Parks Reunited treks — the adventure that Covid stole from them a year ago.If you wonder why they haven’t looked for a terrain that resembles our mountains better, well, they are…
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What About GH Mega Trek by Boat?
📁 HikingUPDATE, NOVEMBER 2021: The new GH Mega Trek time is May 2022. The details to follow.Ladies and gentlemen,Have you been excited about the Gorilla Highlands Mega Trek but doubting if this grand tour is something that can realistically work for you?Allow us to present a new way of being part of the GH Mega Trek:…
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Why Did Rwanda’s Fiercest Woman Die Teaching Black Magic in Kampala?
Muserekande, born c. 1870, was one of the wives of King Rwabugiri of Rwanda. On his death in 1895 there was a succession dispute led by the Beega clan who championed Musinga, a son aged 15. Muserekande escaped, changed her name to Muhumuza (“She who gives rest from tyranny”) and attempted to make her son,…
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Fire, Death and Rebirth
50mm, 1.6s, f/4.5, ISO1600We — humans, that is — seem to be irresistibly drawn to fire, as much for its beauty as for its destructive power. The sheer force of it can be mesmerising.The lava lake atop Mt Nyiragongo is one of my favourite places on Earth. I inevitably find myself enthralled by the ever-shifting…
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Our Focus: Build the Foundation
Dear GHE members, We are pleased that we have registered almost 100 users so far, and are impressed and encouraged by the spectrum of backgrounds you represent. We believe this platform will eventually be huge and successfully inform, de-stress and entertain all kinds of people.Nevertheless, as we leave the Early Bird phase behind we first…
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My Story and Recipes from the Online Picnic on Cyuza Island
I did not know what to expect from the Online Picnic on Lake Burera… How can a professional chef like me, used to kitchens of international hotels, adapt to an island with no electricity, no fridge, no oven, …?It wasn’t my first time to cook at an Online Picnic — the previous event at Musanze…
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We Have Been Written About
This is an honour. One of the most prominent men in the responsible travel movement, the author of the Responsible Tourism book, has written about us. In his article for Travel Tomorrow Harold Goodwin highlights the storytelling aspect of our work and quotes Mari’s recent blog extensively.It is worth noting that Goodwin’s piece points at…
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Survivor’s Tale
My readers, I am here again because the editor feels that I should update you on coffee at least once a month…I will, I promise. I already have the next topic in mind: how one properly handles coffee after harvesting it.However, as my March story I am offering something more about myself…I was born 42…
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Giraffe Gyrations
145mm, 1/250s, f/5, ISO400Rwanda’s mountain gorillas understandably steal much of the country’s headlines as far as wildlife tourism goes. But Akagera National Park in the country’s east is a wonderful experience of the more “typical” kind with plenty of the usual suspects: giraffes, buffaloes, elephants, zebras, lions and rhinos (though the latter two can be…
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Reflections from My Mirror
Travelling to another country or region and encountering the people of those places, always comes with its own particularities and challenges. As a graduated anthropologist I’m supposed to be quite literate about “different cultures”. At least that is what I used to say when people asked me what it actually means to study Social and…
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