Dark, foreboding clouds accompanied my first mountain gorilla encounter in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, echoing silverback Makara's angry mood. Minutes after our trackers found three gorillas from the Habinyanja family, the huge male broke our awestruck silence with a scream that shook us to the bones. He rushed towards us waving his fist in the air, his eyes full of fury.
Thankfully, he stopped just a couple of metres from us, then begrudgingly backed away.
“Something's wrong,” our guide Gard whispered. “There should be 19 gorillas in this group. When the silverback's unhappy, he hides them.”
With an almost human expression of petulance, Makara glared at us for a few minutes, then charged again. For four humid hours, we'd trekked along steep paths, through mud, tangled vines and dense vegetation with moss and beard-like lichen dripping from the trees, only to have less than half our permitted hour with the gorillas when Gard announced it was time to leave: “He's charged twice, and twice is enough,” he said.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of gorilla tourism in Uganda's Bwindi
