Who we are, and how we are paid

What this site is

Luxury Gorilla Safari is about the experience rather than the arrangements. What the day is actually like, how hard the walk genuinely is, what happens during the hour with the family, how to photograph a dark wet forest, and whether to add chimpanzees.

It exists because almost everything published about gorilla trekking is either reverent or promotional, and neither prepares anybody for the specifics. It can rain for the entire time. The family is frequently resting in thick vegetation, and what you see is a shoulder and a face through leaves rather than the clearing in the photographs. The hour goes extraordinarily fast. The light is poor and no flash is permitted. A porter is worth taking even if you are fit.

Knowing all of that beforehand makes the morning better rather than worse, which is the whole argument for writing it down. The photographs everybody has seen are the best ten minutes of somebody else’s hour, and arriving expecting only that is how people end up quietly disappointed by one of the most remarkable hours available anywhere.

Rules on viewing distance, health and equipment have changed more than once in recent years and are properly a matter for current authority guidance, so we confirm the position for your dates rather than publishing something here that may have moved. And we earn nothing on permits, which are a pass-through to the authority — worth knowing when you read us recommending a second trek over a better room.

We are not a safari operator. We do not own camps and we do not drive the vehicles.

Who arranges the safaris

When you send an enquiry it goes to Nomad Africa, our partner travel agency in Kenya. They build your itinerary, price it, hold the bookings, take the payments and look after you on the ground from the airport pickup to the flight home.

They plan and operate directly in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Botswana and Zanzibar, which is the whole of what we publish guides to. Where we do not have that depth, we say so rather than taking the enquiry.

It is one partnership, not a marketplace. We do not put your enquiry out to a panel of operators and we do not pass your details to anyone else.

The rules we write to

• No invented reviews. If you see a testimonial here, a real person wrote it and gave us permission to publish it with their name.
• No invented statistics or credentials. We do not claim licences, memberships, awards or numbers we cannot document.
• No promises about animals. Nobody can guarantee a river crossing or a leopard, and any site that implies otherwise is selling.
• Ranges, not fake precision. Where we publish costs they are clearly marked as indicative planning ranges. Your quote is the exact number.
• We say when something will not work. If your budget does not reach what you are picturing, or your dates are wrong for what you want to see, that goes in the first reply.

Part of a network

We publish a family of specialist Rwanda and Uganda guides, each going deeper on one subject than a single site could. This one is Luxury Gorilla Safari: It rains, they are often asleep, and the hour goes very fast. These are the ones that sit closest to it:

• Gorilla Luxury Safaris — Gorilla trekking at the top end: Rwanda against Uganda, permits, lodges and the real cost.
• East African Luxury — Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda at the top end, and how the four genuinely differ.
• East Africa Bespoke — Trips built around one interest: photography, birding, walking, riding or conservation.
• Luxury Safari Planner — Planning a luxury safari across East and Southern Africa: what the money actually buys, and how to spend it well.

They share this partnership and this editorial standard, and they link to each other wherever a question genuinely belongs on one of the others rather than here.

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