Virunga National Park

A “true island in the sky”, the Virunga National Park (established in 1925) was Africa’s first, and it was granted status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. The park is home to some of the world’s few remaining Mountain Gorillas, which were first studied here in 1959 by George Schaller, and later by Dian Fossey and her colleagues.

The Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda are part of a worldwide population of just 720 individuals. The gorillas we are allowed to track belong to either one of seven habituated family groups. For up to five years each, these groups have undergone an extremely delicate process that has gradually brought them to tolerate the presence of humans for a brief period every day and allowed a few privileged visitors to interact with them in the wild.