tanzania & uganda: gorillas, then the spice islands

Likely to succeed, hard on the legs.

We rate Nkuringo the most demanding place in Bwindi to trek, and the reason is the shape of the ground: the trailhead sits on the Nteko ridge at roughly 2,000 metres and the gorillas are in the forest below, so the day opens with a long descent and ends with the climb back up it, when you have least left.

The family's home range tends to keep the trek within about two hours, though that is a tendency and not a rule.

The odds themselves are good. No authority publishes a rate, and we put it at better than 95 per cent, which holds up because each family is found at dawn in the nests it slept in and watched until visitors arrive.

Eight visitors a day, one hour, minimum age 15. Take a porter.

Because the connections will not meet in one day.

From the ridge you drive down to Kisoro and fly from there to Entebbe, a little over an hour direct and nearer three when the aircraft works its way round other airstrips. The hop from Zanzibar across to Pemba is a morning service, and that is what the middle night is for.

Uganda's national carrier reaches Zanzibar every day, the crossing on to Pemba's airport at Chake Chake takes around 35 minutes, and it is then an hour and a half by road up the island to the northern tip.

The small aircraft hold you to 15 or 20 kilograms each, soft bags, cabin bag counted inside that, so pack to the bush flight rather than the long-haul one.

It is a floating structure moored 250 metres offshore, with a bedroom fully submerged four metres down and glass on every side, a lounging deck on the roof and a bathroom above the water.

Meals come out by boat and the main resort is on call around the clock. The thing to understand is that it is one room and not a hotel: you are out there on your own, the reef life drifts past the glass, and the light and the tide set the mood of the evening.

Most people take it for a night or two inside a longer beach stay, which is how we would plan it, keeping a room on shore for the rest.

The resort does not publish how many nights it can be held for, so we confirm that when we book it. Ask early.

More than the island's reputation suggests.

Guided walks go into the Ngezi Forest Reserve at the northern end, 1,440 hectares of mostly primary forest and the stronghold of the Pemba flying fox, a fruit bat found on no other island, which was listed as critically endangered in 1996 and has recovered far enough to be rated vulnerable.

Nearer the water there are sandbank trips, sunset sailing in a traditional ngalawa outrigger, fishing, and excursions inland through the clove plantations that give the archipelago its spice island name.

Snorkelling works straight off the house reef, where the sand starts at five metres, so a non-diver is not left on the beach. Six nights carries all of that without hurry, with days spare for doing nothing at all.

June to September is the window that suits both ends.

Every one of our own pages for this route carries a recommended rating for those months: a firm forest floor on the Nkuringo ridge, and the calm, clear water of the cool monsoon on Pemba, with the channel walls at their clearest late in that stretch. October still works at the coast.

February stands out in the hot half of the year, settled enough in Bwindi and the best of that stretch in the islands.

April and May are the two to plan around, when the long rains turn the descent off the ridge into a slog and rough seas cut visibility under water. March and November are wet in the forest and unsettled at sea.

Those quieter months do come with easier permits, greener forest and softer light for photographing dark fur.

Most of it moves, and the permit is the one genuinely fixed part.

Eight are issued for each habituated gorilla family each day, each one is dated, and Nkuringo is a small sector, so we buy that morning first and build the calendar around it.

Everything else is loose. Ten nights is short for two countries, so the change we suggest most often is a fourth night on the ridge, which leaves room for a second permit and a day that is not spent walking. The beach can stretch or shorten freely, and the main Zanzibar island is an easier substitute if the diving is not the point.

What we would keep is the Entebbe night, because the flight across to Pemba goes in the morning and that night is what makes the connection work.