A family safari in Rwanda with children

Gorilla trekking requires guests to be fifteen or older. Golden monkey trekking in the same park has a minimum age of twelve. Akagera National Park's game drives and boat safaris have no age limit at all. These are national rules, applied at the briefing, and we would rather you knew them at the planning stage than at Kinigi.

For families with children under fifteen, the answer is not to skip Rwanda. It is to build a companion programme that runs alongside the parents' trek mornings.

Volcanoes National Park activities all begin in the morning, so trek days free up entirely by early afternoon. While parents are on the mountain, younger children go to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund's Ellen DeGeneres Campus, walk the Musanze caves with a guide, visit a local co-operative or bake with the lodge kitchen. Lodges in the region are well used to this and handle it gracefully.

Where two adults both want to trek, we stagger permits across consecutive days so a parent is always at the lodge — a small logistical thing that makes the difference between a workable trip and a fraught one.

Akagera National Park delivers Big Six game viewing — lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, buffalo, and Rwanda's mountain gorillas elsewhere in the country — plus boat safaris among hippo and crocodile on Lake Ihema. There is no age restriction, the drives are comfortable, and the sightings come thick and fast.

Magashi, on a peninsula in the north-east of the park, is the standout camp. Nyungwe's canopy walkway is another reliable success with older children, and the colobus monkey troops there are far easier to reach than the chimpanzees.

A typical family journey runs eight to twelve nights: Kigali, then Akagera for the game viewing, then Volcanoes for the trekking days, with Lake Kivu added if there is time for a swimming stop. Bisate Reserve's three-villa configuration and the larger rooms at One&Only Gorilla's Nest and Singita Kwitonda work best for families sharing.

Booking gorilla trekking with Akagera National Park and Nyungwe National Park in the same itinerary also qualifies the permits for Rwanda's discounted USD $1,050 rate — a meaningful saving across a family of four.