rwanda & tanzania: gorillas and the mara

Five nights is the best thing this route does for your chances, and even then a crossing can never be promised.

The wildebeest are normally on the northern plains from about July into October, August and September being the peak, and the Kogatende stretch holds the marked crossing points. What nobody can arrange is the moment itself: a herd may stand at the water all morning, drift away, change its mind at dusk, or go in a mile downstream.

We suggest three or four nights to anyone whose trip depends on a crossing, so five leave room to spend a whole morning waiting and still feel the days were well used. No honest percentage exists.

The camp is twenty minutes from the airstrip, so arrival days are not lost to driving.

Early, then unpredictable.

Everybody gathers at the park headquarters at Kinigi for a 7am briefing, and the lodge is a short drive along the Kinigi road, so the alarm goes at a reasonable hour by the standards of this trip. Families are allocated at the briefing with fitness in mind, so speak up there.

After that the gorillas decide: the walk may take half an hour or the best part of a day, climbing through bamboo and nettles on soil that never quite dries, at anything from about 2,500 metres upward, which is why it feels harder than the gradient looks.

Boots with grip, waterproofs and old gloves earn their place. There are porters at the trailhead; take one, for the bag and for a hand on a wet slope.

It is there to protect the flight.

The road down from Kinigi takes the better part of three hours in the mountains and the flight to Tanzania leaves from the capital, so that night turns a pre-dawn drive into an evening with something in it: the memorial at Gisozi, the arts centre or the market, with a driver-guide on hand.

It can go if your flight times allow, and we look at that once we have your dates. The quicker alternative is to fly the leg altogether.

Helicopters work out of Kigali and the hop to the volcanoes takes about half an hour, which suits anyone short of time or wary of winding roads. It costs more and it depends on the weather, so we would keep the night in reserve.

Quieter, and still worth the flight.

From about November to March the wildebeest are far to the south and the vehicles thin right out, leaving resident lion, leopard, cheetah and elephant on ground that few people are working. The river changes character too, from a crossing point into a stretch of water with hippo and crocodile in it.

What you give up is the spectacle, and there is no pretending otherwise: if a crossing is the reason for the trip, travel between July and October and accept the company at the sightings.

If it is not, those months hand you the north almost to yourselves, with greener plains, migrant birds and newborn antelope. We would usually move a night or two south in that half of the year, closer to where the herds have gone.

Partly, and the gorillas are why it is only partly.

Rwanda will not take anyone under 15 into the forest with the gorillas, and that rule does not bend, so younger children would spend those mornings elsewhere while the adults trek, which we can arrange, or the Rwandan half waits a few years.

In Tanzania the camp takes children of five and over and has two family tents, and it sets a minimum of 12 for walking safaris, which matches how the national park itself prices walks. Long mornings parked at the river ask a good deal of a small child, with no shade and nowhere to run about.

Give us the ages when you first write, and we will have each camp's own rules in writing before anything is booked.

July and August, if the crossings are the point: both carry our top rating on the volcanoes and in the Serengeti, and they are the heart of the crossing period.

September is close behind at either end. October keeps the herds in the north while Rwanda turns wetter, and in most years it is the last of the crossing months.

The camp closes for April and May, which settles the long rains for you, and April is also the hardest month underfoot on the volcanoes.

January and February are dry months and good ones for the gorillas, but the wildebeest are calving far to the south by then, so we would move the Tanzanian nights to follow them.

March and November bring rain to Rwanda, with quieter forest and easier permits in exchange.