The gorilla families of Volcanoes National Park

Every visitor gathers at Kinigi at 07:00. Wardens divide guests into groups of eight and assign each group to a family based on where the trackers located that family the previous evening, the day's weather, and the fitness and needs of the people in front of them. No lodge, and no operator, can guarantee a family in advance.

What an operator can do is speak for you. We tell the wardens honestly about your fitness, age, knees, altitude experience and photography intentions before the briefing begins. That single conversation is why guests who need a gentler trek generally get one.

Families that habitually range lower on the slopes of Sabyinyo and Gahinga — Sabyinyo, Agashya and Kwitonda among them — often mean a walk of one to three hours each way on comparatively moderate ground. These are the allocations we push for when guests are older, travelling with a recent injury, or simply not walkers.

Nothing is fixed: gorillas move nightly, and a family that was an easy hour last week may be high on the mountain today.

Susa, historically Dian Fossey's study group, and Igisha range high on Karisimbi. A visit can mean five to eight hours of walking, much of it steep, at altitudes above 3,000 metres. It is the most rewarding trek in the park for fit walkers and the wrong choice for anyone unsure of their knees.

If you actively want a hard day, tell us. Wardens are as glad to hear that as they are to hear the opposite.

Each family is led by one or more silverbacks and includes blackbacks, adult females, juveniles and, often, infants. Your hour begins the moment contact is made. Trackers keep the group at the required distance, and the gorillas — entirely habituated to human presence — largely ignore you and continue feeding, grooming and tumbling downhill.

Porters are available for every trek and we book them for everyone. They carry your camera bag, steady you on descents, and the fee goes directly into households on the park boundary.