Gorilla permits: Rwanda or Uganda?

A Rwanda gorilla permit costs $1,500. A Uganda permit costs $800. The gap is real, and so is what it buys — the question is which trade-off suits the rest of your trip.

The permit itself

Both permits buy one hour with a habituated gorilla family, once your trekking group locates them. Neither country lets that hour run longer, regardless of what you paid to get there.

Getting to the trailhead

• Rwanda: roughly three hours from Kigali on good tarmac to the Volcanoes trailheads
• Uganda: nine hours by road from Entebbe to Bwindi, or a ninety-minute internal flight

What the extra $700 in Rwanda buys

Mostly convenience: a shorter trip is possible because the trailhead is close to an international airport, so a long weekend can genuinely include a gorilla trek. Uganda's permit is cheaper, but the country's own logistics — a longer transfer, or a flight — reduce the savings once the whole trip is costed.

What Uganda offers that Rwanda does not

Four separate trekking sectors in Bwindi rather than one park, chimpanzee tracking at Kibale in the same country, and savannah game viewing at Queen Elizabeth National Park — Uganda suits a longer, more varied itinerary better than Rwanda's more compact geography does.

Choose Rwanda for the shortest possible trip. Choose Uganda if the gorilla trek is one stop on a longer, more varied itinerary.

Both countries limit permits to eight visitors per gorilla family per day, and both sell out months ahead in the June-to-September and December-to-February dry seasons — the country matters less than booking early, whichever one you choose.