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Early Light
16mm, f/8, 1/500s, ISO250 The Gorilla Highlands region is, as the name suggests, characterised by its rather hilly topography. This is one of my favourite landscape photos from there, taken at around 4,000 meters/ 13,100 ft above sea level during an exhausting hike up Mt Kirisimbi. Miha joined me shortly afterwards, while Izy was wise…
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Your Uganda Adventure: Covid and Post-Covid Travel Advice
Dear all, my name is Owen Bright, I am from Kyabahinga on Lake Bunyonyi and I have been a Gorilla Highlands guide for a decade. I learned everything on the job, gradually and steadily from the moment I joined Edirisa as a cleaner on 1 May 2010. Covid has disturbed our business badly but I…
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Bringing Africa Closer to You
Ladies and gentlemen, we have been quietly building the Gorilla Highlands Experts Daily Dose blog since 1 February 2021, and a month later we feel that we are ready to go public. This Daily Dose will be the freely available part of our responsible travel membership service, and the unified blogging place for everything that…
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Announcing the GH Mega Trek
📁 HikingUPDATE, NOVEMBER 2021: The new GH Mega Trek time is May 2022. The details to follow. Imagine being in Rusizi, southwestern Rwanda, on the last evening of 2021… On the other side of the Lake Kivu bay, there is a city so beautiful and huge that you can easily think it is the capital city…
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This Book is for Every Non-African in Africa
It is 23 January 2021 in the morning, I have to be at the airport in 2 hours. My luggage already weighs 25 kilograms, two more than the 23 that is allowed, but I am still standing there with five books in my arms that I really want to take with me. I love reading,…
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Edirisa Evenings
19mm, f/6.3, 1/5s, ISO400 I like simplicity in photographs, but sometimes simplicity can be found even in busy backgrounds. Here, the contrasting colors of the fire from the rest of the image immediately brings the viewer’s attention to it and the people sitting around it. This is perhaps my favourite image from Edirisa on Lake…
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You Are NOT Allowed to Miss This
Aaaaaaaaand here we go: the first and the best monthly online Picnic is happening in Musanze this weekend! Time: Saturday, 27 February 2021, 4-6pm Rwandan time which is: 6-8am in San Francisco8-10am in Dallas9-11am in New York2-4pm in London3-5pm in Vienna5-7pm in Kampala Location: Virunga Valley Academy (VVA), Musanze — and your Zoom screens Hosts:…
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Name-Calling in the Virungas
📁 GorillasHello, my friends? I am back home from what we call the prevention area, the zone in which we are kept isolated for two weeks as we track mountains gorillas. Today I want to tell you about some of my favourite gorillas. I know the names and personalities of about 150 of them but some are…
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Weekly Companion — Edirisa Anniversary Edition
I stood in front of the crowd in the packed auditorium in lady clothes, but what I was presenting I was damn serious about … It was 20 February 2001, 19 days after I came up with the window concept, about a week since I shared it with my classmates at the Institute of Ethics…
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Not so Close Encounters, Please
Your first hike through the lush forest, entrance to a clearing, and face to face encounter a family of Mountain Gorillas in the wild, should be life experience enough for anyone. But in these days of social media, it may not be — we need selfies as well. It may be such selfies of friends…
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Grumpy Silverback
Hi! I’m Marcus Westberg, a longtime Gorilla Highlands collaborator. I’m originally from Sweden, but work as a photojournalist all over the world — though Africa is where my heart is. For the foreseeable future, I’ll be posting a mostly-weekly column focusing on some of my favorite images and experiences from the Gorilla Highlands region, usually…
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Why Gorilla Numbers Keep Growing
Great news: the three Covid-infected gorillas at the San Diego Zoo have fully recovered. They showed only light symptoms — cough and lack of energy — during sickness but with this naughty virus you really never know… Last week we updated you on how gorilla tracking has been made safe for the animals in the…
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Aroma of Fresh Coffee, a Powerful Force
I am Julius Wetala, a coffee experience creator and specialised guide, based in Uganda’s southernmost town, Kisoro. I have lived with coffee for over 30 years, first as a boy working on a family coffee farm, and in recent years as an organic coffee project manager. (If you wish to read more about my background or…
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Weekly Companion — Let It Be Then?
This video has been uploaded to YouTube because countless night attempts using our private solution (Vimeo) haven’t worked out… But, on the other hand, this is also OK. Let’s have it on YouTube and publicly available then. It may not be an ideal representation of a video promoting GHE to the general audience (this version…
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Emma’s Gorilla Tracking Field Report
Hello members! I hope this finds you well, l am called Emmanuel Harerimana, the Gorilla Highlands Expert from Volcanoes National Park! My job is the one of a park guide and I have the honour of visiting mountain gorillas about three times each week. To keep Rwanda’s most valuable animal safe in the pandemic, I…
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What Do You Think About First In-Sights?
In-Sights (our unique take on online courses) are part and parcel of the Gorilla Highlands Experts concept. Last week we published the first lesson of “Volunteering” and we will add more soon. It would help us big time if you told us what you think about the already posted 5 clips… Each topic within the…
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Rwebandira’s 27 Hours of Your Sweet Memories
The end of this video gives me goosebumps. The words are spoken by Festo Karwemera, the Bakiga cultural warrior who passed away last year… Karwemera nicknamed me Rwebandira two decades ago, after knowing me for only a short time. Yet he couldn’t have been more prescient… He translated the name for me as a “trailblazer”…
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How to Prepare a Four-Course Gorilla Highlands Delicacy
In this video from our archives, a Gorilla Highlands Silverchef participant Chef Paul Mulyampiti (RIP) shows you how to prepare garlic baguette with guacamole, spring onion soup, garden salad with orange and lemon dressing, and deep-fried matooke with creamed spinach. RECIPE Garlic baguette with guacamole: Ingredients and tools:avocadotomatoesonionsgreen pepperbaguettelemongarliccorianderparsleybutterpinch of salt2 bowelstoaster Directions:1. Put avocado…
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