Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda is one of three places in the world where you can still see some of the 500 or so remaining mountain gorillas remaining in the wild. DR Congo and Rwanda are your other two options, although DR Congo is more or less off-limits at the moment.
The normal procedure is to organise a gorilla permit weeks or months in advance from the Ugandan Wildlife Service headquarters in the capital, Kampala. Dan and I never bothered with this. Instead, we just showed up at the gate of the national park and hoped that a permit would be available. As soon as word got around among the guides and campsite employees that we didn’t have a permit, we were approached about the possibility of seeing the gorillas ‘privately’. In other words, a corrupt Ugandan Wildlife Service guide would show us the gorillas privately and pocket the money himself. Considering the normal fee is US$500 per person, and nearly all of that goes to the government in Kampala and only a fraction to the local community, Dan and I did not immediately rule out this possibility. After some brief negotiations, though, we quickly realised that we were being played for fools. The web of corruption ran deep, and the only real winners would be the fatcats at the top. Fortunately there were legitimate permits available, so we each took one and did the whole thing above board. I’m glad we did because seeing the gorillas in the wild, just meters from us, was a wonderful and unforgettable experience.
The normal procedure is to organise a gorilla permit weeks or months in advance from the Ugandan Wildlife Service headquarters in the capital, Kampala. Dan and I never bothered with this. Instead, we just showed up at the gate of the national park and hoped that a permit would be available. As soon as word got around among the guides and campsite employees that we didn’t have a permit, we were approached about the possibility of seeing the gorillas ‘privately’. In other words, a corrupt Ugandan Wildlife Service guide would show us the gorillas privately and pocket the money himself. Considering the normal fee is US$500 per person, and nearly all of that goes to the government in Kampala and only a fraction to the local community, Dan and I did not immediately rule out this possibility. After some brief negotiations, though, we quickly realised that we were being played for fools. The web of corruption ran deep, and the only real winners would be the fatcats at the top. Fortunately there were legitimate permits available, so we each took one and did the whole thing above board. I’m glad we did because seeing the gorillas in the wild, just meters from us, was a wonderful and unforgettable experience.
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