This is not where my story begins. After leaving my house 6 times, making a gallant effort to be upgraded and narrowly avoiding a visit to the local hospital on touch down, I arrived in Uganda at the Entebbe Guest House where I sat in a beautiful garden eating my first truly Ugandan breakfast of marmite on toast with fellow travellers. It was lovely to have an afternoon and evening getting to know everyone before Georgie and Chris were to take us off, in to the unknown on a great big red and blue Mercedes truck.
I hadn’t planned to go gorilla trekking, but after hearing Georgie regale everyone with what they would experience I felt it was something that could turn out to be the most amazing part of the trip. Chris managed to pull some strings, jump through some hoops and yank a bunny from a hat to get me a permit in to the jungle so I could trek with everyone else. We had a briefing early morning on the gorillas we would be tracking – the Habinyanja family, the largest group in the jungle, it could take 30 minutes or 3 hours+ to find them.
The terrain was a giant mountain that ascended in to the Congo along tracks, streams and lush green vegetation. I was helped along by Moses who had a big smile and laughed at my unusual head attire.
We climbed up through narrow, steep pathways with vegetation shading us from the sun. After the first hour our guide David turned and said to me, ‘Lindsey have you spent much time in Kampala?’, to which I replied ‘no, none at all, why?’, he retorted with a grin ‘well, in Kampala they have a lot of alcohol and whenever Moses helps you, you say to him in Ugandan ‘Wayaballi monegei’ which means ‘thank you alcohol’. My eagerness to learn Ugandan faded somewhat after this.
Our trackers were 2 hours ahead and hadn’t seen any sign of the family we were searching for, we carried on for so long that we reached the summit and began our descent into the middle of the jungle, the views were amazing, the whole area descended in to layers of varying trees with mist rising through them. We carried on walking and talking for another 2 hours until I looked back to say something to Les and Cari who had fallen suddenly silent with eyes staring in another direction, this gave me a massive tingle all down my spine and I turned to see Malaya (a boy gorilla with a girls name) sitting placidly amongst a lush green foliage, tearing leaves and roots from the trees above, stripping it down and chewing in the most nonchalant manner.The first thing I thought was, fuck, that’s what I look like….. haaaaa, the second, despite this being the world's largest primate, it just looks like a gentle giant with short legs, long muscular arms, a wide chest and incredibly large head. I could never imagine anyone standing here refuting the theories of evolution.
We moved on quickly to find the rest of the band and quickly stumbled on silverback Makara. I only managed a glimpse for a few seconds of the most enormous head, massive body and silverback before Makara decided to charge at us. There was a seismic reverberating and grunting roar that came as he charged across the forest floor on his knuckles with speed. The second this happened we fell to the ground and turned our eyes away – just as we had been briefed, and in the last second he turned and thumped in the other direction. I will never forget how much fear and excitement I felt at this very point - as this 1/4 tonne, black hairy creature came running towards us, knowing full well that he could extinguish us all with a few heavy sweeps, it was exhilarating - I also nearly wet my pants.This whole day was brilliant in so many ways – the beautiful Buhoma lodge high up in the densely covered hills over looking the jungle, seeing Georgie’s smiley face as we all turned the corner back in to the lodge at the end of the day, getting to know lovely hypnotherapist Cari along the trek and the bath – the best bath I have ever had (I wish I could show the photos) and an awesome meal in the evening over numerous G’n’T’s, then back to the lodge to wash some underwear.
No comments:
Post a Comment