Mountain high
Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park is 331 square kilometres of rolling green hills dotted with tea plantations and flanked by misty mountaintops and extinct volcanic peaks known as the Virungas.
I am walking down one of these hills, which is blanketed in a dense undergrowth of lush vegetation and Hagenia forests, when my local guide, Joseph whispers in a calm yet urgent tone, “Make room!”
Unbeknown to me, there’s a mountain gorilla, a juvenile female, casually knuckle-walking her way toward me. She’s a latecomer to the troop of gorillas we have been tracking the past hour-and-a-half in the depths of the forest.
My eyes dart back and forth between the thorn bushes and stinging nettle that surround me. I am still processing where exactly to move to when the female gorilla nonchalantly brushes past me to join her family feasting on the rich vegetation below.
The female takes a seat close to Rafiki (Swahili for “friend”); he’s the leader of the family and has a coat of glorious silver hair on his back. This only appears on mature males and
