Here is roughly how a trekking day at Volcanoes National Park unfolds.

Your day starts early, typically with a pickup from your lodge around 5:30 to 6am to reach park headquarters at Kinigi for a briefing that usually begins around 7am. This is where groups are formed, generally a maximum of eight visitors per gorilla family, and where you are assigned to a specific family based on your fitness level and preference if you have expressed one in advance.

Trackers head out ahead of the tourist groups to locate the assigned family, since gorillas move and are not sat waiting in the same spot each day. Your actual walk to reach them can range from under an hour to several hours, depending on where the family has moved to that morning, and porters are available to hire at headquarters, genuinely worth it for carrying bags and for the support with steep or muddy sections.

Terrain around Volcanoes involves genuine altitude, the park sits at the base of a chain of volcanoes, so some sections are a real physical effort even before accounting for uneven ground.

Once you reach the gorillas, you get exactly one hour with the family, a rule enforced consistently to limit stress on the animals. Rangers manage distance and behaviour throughout, and this hour is genuinely the highlight most people remember for years afterwards.

After the hour, you walk back out to headquarters, usually arriving back at your lodge by early to mid afternoon, leaving the rest of the day free.

Pack layers, as mornings are cold and the walk warms you up quickly, along with waterproofs, sturdy boots and gardening gloves for gripping vegetation on steeper sections.