If Rachel Hunter could do it, so could I. Gorilla tracking, that is. Ardent celeb watchers will recall the ex-Mrs Rod Stewart having a recent encounter with African gorillas, resulting in both gorillas and Hunter making an exclusive appearance in Hello . She had even stayed in the same place, the Volcanoes Tented Camp in Uganda's Bwindi National Impenetrable Forest. I asked one of the camp staff how she had been. 'Demanding,' he said.
Reaching the campsite was an adventure in itself; from Uganda's capital Kampala we took an hour-long flight in a twin-prop plane followed by four hours on dirt-track roads in a jeep, by which time the sun had set. It was pitch black and pretty chilly; these gorillas live up high, on the ridges of the mountainous border with Rwanda.
Our 'luxury' accommodation had no electricity and no running water. The ensuite facility beside each tent was a hole in the ground. Lighting was provided by a hurricane lamp. Washing was from a leather bucket. Strung up behind a modest green curtain, these buckets provided the most fantastic al fresco shower on the planet. But hey! This was the jungle and we had gone out there to see gorillas. With Walt Disney, as it happened.
You might be surprised to learn that Disney takes sourcing for its animated features very seriously. And so when Disney made its version of Tarzan , an orgy of apes and swinging lianas, it was felt that the director needed to experience real apes in real jungles. The obvious place to do the research was Uganda, a country which specialises in seeing families of wild gorillas at close quarters. And so after the release of the pic and (crucially) before the home video comes out, the director of Tarzan returned to the jungle, accompanied by a motley bunch of film critics, arts journalists and, weirdly, someone from a woman's puzzle magazine intending to write a honeymoon story. With gorillas and Disney somehow appearing in the midst. Or should I say in the mist?
After a scary night on the campbed (the camp staff kindly allowed me to keep my hurricane lamp lit outside all night), I woke to see mist hanging in filmy clouds across the huge, verdant mountains. Bwindi's jungle isn't called Impenetrable for nothing; the thick, green mountain sides have never been touched. The whole area was saved from deforestation and declared a National Park when sleeping sickness deemed the land inappropriate for farming.
Gorilla tracking is marketed as a 'unique' African experience, yet its invention was born of necessity. When Idi Amin took power in Uganda in 1971, the chaotic years that followed meant that much of Uganda's wildlife in the game reserves was slaughtered. The tourist authority had to find alternative attractions such as bird watching and gorilla tracking. Coincidentally, the renowned zoologist Dian Fossey had begun to 'naturalise' families of gorillas in neighbouring Rwanda.
Using Fossey's techniques, families of Ugandan gorillas in two parks were naturalised in the same way. Still wild, and still very much in the wild, the great apes began to tolerate awe-inspired visitors on a daily basis. By 1998, Uganda was attracting 250,000 visitors every year, with gorilla tracking one of the main attractions. With tourists paying about $175 each for a one-day permit, it was a gold mine.
Then on 1 March 1999, more than 100 Rwandan Hutu rebels swooped on Bwindi and hacked eight tourists and a Ugandan game warden to death. Immediately, business collapsed. Foreign tourism, which had accounted for 25 per cent of Uganda's total trade, fell to 10 per cent.
A year on, things at Bwindi are improving. The company which had suffered the attack has gone out of business. But Volcanoes, where we were staying, was full and permits were at their maximum again while we were there (only 18 permits are issued a day). The camps have 24-hour armed guard and the situation in Central Africa has eased somewhat. And I felt reasonably confident that not only Disney but Hello! had ventured back. I mean, losing Rachel Hunter? Unthinkable.
However, so intense is the experience of being in the middle of the Ugandan jungle that frankly all thoughts of guerillas were subsumed by thoughts of the big hairy version. The permit only allows one chance to track the gorillas; if you can't find them, it's tough luck. This isn't Windsor Safari Park. 'But you have a 90 per cent chance of seeing gorillas,' said Gadi, our guide. We were escorted by three rangers and two rifle-toting members of the Uganda People's Defence Force. Early in the morning Gadi had sent two fellow trackers off; communicating with walkie talkies they used tell-tale gorilla signs such as crushed vegetation, dung and, frankly, I don't know what to find the apes.
Gorillas move quickly around the jungle, but our trackers had no compasses, no maps, and no paths. And we had to follow them. First we had to get into the jungle, which meant climbing about 2,000 feet for two hours up a vertical path in the boiling heat.
Fine for the trackers. Fine for the Disney director, a rangy individual who clearly used the corporate gym on a maniacally regular basis. Not so fine for the British journalists. We suffered, oh how did we suffer. We carried three litres of water per person, and even that didn't seem like enough. Still, if Rachel could do it, I was going to.
After that agony, we turned off the mountain ridge and crashed into the jungle. Suddenly, our gloves and sweltering long-sleeved shirts were a godsend as we pushed past thorny branches, climbed over logs, grabbed lianas and forded rivers. Occasionally, Gadi would talk to his men on the walkie-talkie, although how he kept track of our whereabouts relative to theirs, I will never know. The jungle canopy was hundreds of feet high, and solid. At times it was difficult even to see where the sun was.
Did everyone make it? Yes. But we heard horror stories of exhausted people turning back in tears. After about the fifth hour and the tenth water stop, Gadi signalled for silence. 'The gorillas are near,' he said. We walked on. Suddenly, there they were. A huge silverback and his family. Five or six females, lying on the ground, scratching and hugging their babies, dear little furry toddlers who were messing about with sticks. The silverback watched us carefully; the others just carried on picking each other's fur, farting and grunting softly. A gorilla family chilling out after lunch. The babies swung from trees; the adults lay on the soft ground and watched them. We stood in riveted amazement. No one was allowed to use flash photography; you aren't even allowed to sneeze in the direction of the apes for fear of infection.
After our allotted hour, we returned back down the mountain. Our legs and feet ached; our shirts were drenched and filthy. But we had had perhaps the closest encounter one could ever have with a truly wild animal - and the one closest in body and spirit to ourselves at that.
Getting there
Flights: British Airways (0845 77 333 77) has two non-stop flights from Gatwick to Entebbe a week and a third via Nairobi. Fares start at £516.30 including taxes. SA Alliance Air (020 8944 5012) has two non-stop flights a week from Heathrow to Entebbe with fares starting at £455.10.
Packages: Tim Best Travel (020 7591 0300) arranged the Disney journey. They tailor-make travel to Uganda. A seven-day safari costs from £2,750 per person including BA flights, four-wheel vehicle transport with guides, accommodation and meals, and a gorilla tracking permit in Bwindi and a chimpanzee tracking permit.
When to go: The best time is from June to October after the long rains which clear the air. The short rains are in November. The other season to travel is between December to March.
