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Advice on Buying your Own Camping Gear
Last week we talked about the beauty and challenges of camping in the Gorilla Highlands and promised we would move a level higher today: into buying your own camping gear. We are still helping an East African beginner enjoy the thrill of sleeping in nature, but now we will be guiding your tent shopping in…
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Why the Gorilla Highlands Society?
Update, December 2018: This post has been rewritten in light of the formation of the Gorilla Highlands Society Uganda, Rwanda and DR Congo are all going to be successful countries and good neighbours one day. The history of Latin America, Asia and even Europe can hint at how the development stages go; it’s mostly a…
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Love in Traditional Rwanda: Arranged and Communal
Love in the traditional Rwandan society meant learning to love the partner others chose for you. It began with a relative of a bachelor pointing out a young lady as a potential bride for him. This was known as Kuranga which translates directly as ‘to announce’. The bachelor’s family would then select a man as…
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9 Observations of Kigali, Rwanda, by an Expert Africa Amateur
Hello to all, my name is Anika Utke. I am an eighteen year old American and the newest addition to the Gorilla Highlands team. My life one year ago is unrecognizable from my life today. I was a kid in high school that had never been out of the country before and was spending countless…
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Never Double Cross an Evil Genius
This is the queen of bloggers Enya Logar (ENYA!!! ENYA!!! ENYA!!! Yeah!!! She’s so amazing! ENYA!!! ENYA!!! ENYA!!!). … Shhh I know I’m pretty amazing but quiet down, and let me begin. So I guess you have all heard about New Year’s at Tom’s Homestay? For those who don’t know, what rock have you been…
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A is for Adventure, B is for Beginners, C is for…
Are you new to camping, hiking, canoeing and all these adventure things? You’ve come to the right place! This year on the Gorilla Highlands blog there will be quite some emphasis on domestic tourism, on Rwandans and Ugandans getting comfortable in our astonishing wilderness. And, to be properly inclusive, we do know there are many…
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Valentine’s Comes Early: Love in the Wild
“You are special to me,” we like to say to our loved ones. What about proving that sweetly by surprising them with a truly special experience? Think about bonding on a remote island… On Lake Bunyonyi, quite possibly the most beautiful lake in the world… At Tom’s Homestay, a place nominated for Uganda’s Tourism Excellence…
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Gorilla Highlands in a Dutch Travel Magazine
The Gorilla Highlands initiative is about promoting southwestern Uganda and northwestern Rwanda globally, and we have started 2017 well. Columbus Travel, the second biggest travel magazine in the Netherlands with 45,000 readers, has published a special edition called Travel Bucketlist 2017 with the Gorilla Highlands in it. They asked Dutch celebrities to share their travel tips, and…
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Building Traditions: New Year’s Eve Celebration on Habukomi Island
“How do local people celebrate New Year’s Eve?” visitors to the Gorilla Highlands often ask. Until 2007 there wasn’t much to say. The drumming that traditionally announces Christmas would get repeated to some degree, and that would be all. But now that we have awaited a new year on Habukomi Island ten years in a…
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Thanks, 2016!
Here in the Gorilla Highlands we respect the old. No Omugurusi, Umusaza or Mzee should be mistreated, no newborn could possibly be more important than those who have seen it all. So the way everybody seems to be eager to beat 2016 off the stage to clear space for 2017 feels profoundly wrong. Secondly, as a…
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Kigali-Based & Professionalised
Five years ago, on 22 December 2011, the Gorilla Highlands initiative was first made public. We circulated a photocopied concept sheet at a Banyakigezi convention at White Horse Inn in Kabale stating:– the region had immense tourism potential but suffered from remoteness, insufficient travel information, excessive focus on gorillas and lack of branding– the “Gorilla Highlands”…
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Masozera Something in Between
Never had I thought there would come a time in my life when I would want to explore myself. Conquer my fears…. Walk.
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Blasio’s Flower
I don’t enjoy weddings. They take too much time and they are almost the same, wherever you go in Uganda. But when Blasio, Edirisa’s co-director, asked me to come to his first-born’s kwanjula, I felt I couldn’t say no. Also known as the introduction, this is the central part of the traditional wedding procedures. Busy…
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Mgahinga Gorillas Get a Baby
Cyizanie, a mountain gorilla belonging to the Nyakagezi group, gave birth yesterday. An American/Palestinian visitor Dina Tamimi had the privilege of witnessing the astonishing event, as you will see in her video below. The sex of the 11th Nyakagezi gorilla is yet to be determined. This news is exactly what Mgahinga Gorilla National Park needs.…
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Missing Hippos
Out of the blue, three hippos appeared. They became the talk of Lake Bunyonyi, the lake so casually described as super-safe for swimming, with no bilharzia (more about that here), no crocodiles … and no hippos. Well, in 2013 they were very much there. For several days, until locals got tired of hippos eating their…
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GH Bootcamp: From Bunyonyi with Love
Envisaged to inform and inspire the Gorilla Highlands team in Kigali, it has grown into something bigger.
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As Easy to Pronounce as Drinking Water
This text was written in 2007 by Noah Liberi. He was 20 at the time, his only formal education being a rural secondary school in Bukinda, Kabale. But he would read and observe a lot and condense his wisdom of life into the story about Teach Inn Uganda that we will publish in weekly instalments. You…
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Our Grandest Trek in 28 Photos
As an introduction to the upcoming Gorilla Highlands Bootcamp we’ve pulled something attractive from our archives. This is how our global team hiked in June two years ago — through the Ugandan part of the Gorilla Highlands from Edirisa on Lake Bunyonyi to Mgahinga Gorilla National Park. The 20 trek participants came from Africa, America…
