Choose the permit first, then the lodge that is near it

Rwanda: one headquarters, a short drive

All Volcanoes treks begin at the same park headquarters, so every lodge in the area is measured by how long it takes to get there for an early briefing.

The field is small and concentrated, and a good deal of it sits at the top of the market — there is not much of a middle. The differences between the best lodges are hospitality rather than access, because everybody tracks from the same place on the same terms.

What a lodge does affect: how early you have to leave, how warm and comfortable you are at altitude the night before, how good the food is, and what happens to soaked boots and clothing afterwards. On a trip where the central hour is identical for everybody, those things matter more than they sound.

Uganda: four sectors, and they are far apart

Bwindi is trekked from four sectors — Buhoma and Ruhija in the north, Rushaga and Nkuringo in the south — and they are separated by long, slow mountain roads.

Your permit is issued for a sector. A lodge in the wrong one is not a minor inconvenience; it is a pre-dawn departure on difficult roads, or a change of lodge mid-trip.

So in Uganda the sequence is strict: secure the permit, learn the sector, then choose from the lodges near that sector. Anybody offering you a lodge before the permit is confirmed is working in the wrong order.

What to look for in a gorilla lodge

• Distance to the trailhead or headquarters, in minutes, on the actual road.
• Warmth. It is cold at altitude and a fire matters more here than at any savanna camp.
• Drying. Somewhere for soaked boots, waterproofs and trousers to be dealt with overnight.
• An early breakfast, because briefings start early and a lodge that cannot feed you before you leave is a poor fit.
• A hot bath or good shower, which after four hours on a wet slope is not a frivolous requirement.

Those five are worth more on a gorilla trip than a larger room, and none of them appears in a photograph.

How many nights

Three at minimum near the forest if you are doing two treks: arrive, trek, trek, leave. Four is more comfortable and gives you a spare day if weather or illness intervenes.

A single night before a single trek is the tightest version and it leaves no margin at all. Flights are delayed; roads wash out; people get colds.

What else to do from there

In Rwanda: golden monkey tracking in the same park, and Nyungwe for chimpanzees and canopy forest a few hours away.

In Uganda: chimpanzee tracking at Kibale, which is the best in the region, plus the Ishasha sector for tree-climbing lions and Murchison for the Nile. Uganda’s advantage is that the second half of the trip is already there.