Gorilla trekking permits in Uganda and Rwanda

What a permit covers

A gorilla trekking permit is for one person, one trek and one habituated family on a given day. It covers the ranger briefing, the ranger guides and trackers who take you in, and one hour with the gorillas once you reach them. It is issued for a particular park and, in Uganda's Bwindi, for a particular sector, which decides where you stay the night before.

In Uganda, no more than eight people may visit a family in a day. The minimum age is fifteen.

What permits cost

• Uganda, gorilla trekking: $800 per person in 2026, rising to $1,000 in 2027.
• Uganda, gorilla habituation experience: $1,500 per person in 2026, rising to $1,800 in 2027, for four hours with a group in Bwindi's Rushaga sector. There are four permits a day.
• Rwanda, gorilla trekking in Volcanoes National Park: $1,500 per person.

In Uganda, the permit money goes into the conservation work that brought the mountain gorilla back from the brink: the wages of the trackers, rangers and community scouts who look after the forest.

How to get one

Uganda's permits are issued by the Uganda Wildlife Authority and Rwanda's by the Rwanda Development Board. When you book a gorilla safari with us, we buy the permit for your date and sector as part of the booking, and almost every gorilla safari we run includes it in the price. Rwanda's permits depend on availability at the time of booking.

Permits are the first thing to sell out. For the dry months book six to nine months ahead; in the green months eight weeks is often enough.

Trekking or habituation?

A standard trek gives you one hour with a family that is fully used to people. The habituation experience, in Bwindi's Rushaga sector, gives you four hours with researchers and a group that is still being habituated. It is longer and costs more, and with four permits a day there are far fewer of them.

On the day

Whichever permit you hold, the day starts early with a ranger briefing at the park or sector headquarters. You are given a family and walk in with ranger guides while trackers radio ahead. The walk can take under an hour or most of the day, depending on where the family moved overnight, and it is often steep and muddy. In Uganda there is a trekking certificate at the end.

Uganda or Rwanda?

Uganda's gorillas are in Bwindi and Mgahinga; Rwanda's are in Volcanoes National Park, two to three hours from Kigali. Rwanda's permit costs more: $1,500, against Uganda's $800 in 2026 and $1,000 in 2027. Our guides to gorilla trekking in Uganda and gorilla trekking in Rwanda cover each park in detail, and gorilla safaris from Kigali covers the short trips from Rwanda's capital, Bwindi included.

The safaris below are our shortest gorilla trips, where the permit is most of what you are paying for.