Rwanda

Rwanda sits two degrees south of the equator at altitude, which means it has no hot season and no cold season — Kigali sits between roughly 15 and 27 °C essentially all year. What it has instead are four rainfall periods, and they matter far more than temperature.

The long dry season, mid-June to mid-September, is the classic window and the one most people should book. The reason is mud. Gorilla trekking in Volcanoes National Park means climbing through bamboo and Hagenia forest on volcanic soil at 2,500 to 3,000 metres, following a family that moved overnight. In the dry season that is a demanding but straightforward two to four hour walk. In the long rains it is the same walk with every step sliding backwards, and it changes the experience from strenuous to genuinely hard. The short dry season, mid-December to February, works the same way and is quieter.

The long rains, March to mid-May, are the season we recommend to a specific kind of traveller: someone who has trekked before, does not mind being wet, and wants the Virungas at their most cinematic — mist in the bamboo, the volcanoes appearing and vanishing, and trailheads that are not shoulder-to-shoulder. Permit availability is easier at short notice. Note that Rwanda, unlike Uganda, does not discount permits in low season, so you are trading comfort for space rather than money.

Two things run against that grain. Nyungwe Forest gets around 2,000 mm of rain a year and there is no month in which you should expect to stay dry there — pack for rain regardless of season. And chimpanzee tracking in Nyungwe is genuinely easier in the wet months, because in the dry season the chimps range higher and further for fruit and the pre-dawn start can end in a distant, fleeting sighting. Gorillas in the dry, chimps in the wet, is the honest trade-off.

For Akagera, the dry months from June to September concentrate game around the lakes in the same way any savannah park does, and the tracks in the northern sector are firm. From March to May the black cotton soil in parts of the park turns to grease and the northern loop can become a 4x4-only proposition or close entirely.

Rwanda has, by a clear margin, the best road network we work with. The Kigali–Musanze route north to the Volcanoes trailheads is around 105 kilometres of smooth, well-graded, two-lane tar and takes a little over two hours. Kigali west to Rubavu on Lake Kivu is around three hours on the same standard of road. The southern route via Huye down to Nyungwe and on to Rusizi is sealed the whole way. You will not need a 4x4 for any of it.

What the tar hides is the topography. Rwanda is called the land of a thousand hills for a literal reason, and almost no road here runs straight or flat. A 200-kilometre day is five hours, not two and a half, because every kilometre is a switchback with a truck on it. Passing on blind corners is normal local practice and the reason we ask guests to hold back rather than join in. Add pedestrians, bicycles carrying improbable loads, and the constant flow of moto taxis, and the sensible average is 50 to 60 km/h regardless of what the tar looks like.

Speed limits are enforced properly here — fixed cameras on the main routes, police checkpoints that are polite, quick and genuinely checking, and fines that arrive by SMS. 40 to 60 km/h through built-up areas, 80 km/h on the open road. Rwanda takes this seriously and so should you.

The rough roads are the ones you choose deliberately. The lakeside route along Lake Kivu between Rubavu, Karongi and Rusizi — the corridor the Congo Nile Trail follows — is dirt and gravel, spectacular, slow, and a genuine 4x4 proposition in the wet. In Akagera, the main southern tracks are manageable in a 2x4 in the dry, but the northern sector around Lake Rwanyakazinga wants high clearance and four-wheel drive, and the park requires it outright when the black cotton soil is wet.

Fuel is the easiest thing about driving Rwanda. Stations are frequent on all main routes, rarely more than 50 or 60 kilometres apart, and generally have stock. There is no jerry-can planning to do here, which after Namibia or Botswana feels like a holiday in itself. Card payment works in Kigali and Musanze; carry Rwandan francs in cash for anywhere smaller.

Rwanda's compactness is its great advantage: nothing is more than a day's drive from anything else, so you can give each park the nights it deserves without spending the trip in transit. A well-built Rwanda itinerary is eight to eleven nights.

• 3 nightsVolcanoes National Park

  Three nights, not two, and here is why. Night one you arrive from Kigali and acclimatise at around 2,300 metres. Day two is your gorilla trek. Day three is what most people skip and everyone who does it remembers: golden monkey trekking in the bamboo, or the hike up to Dian Fossey's Karisoke research site and her grave alongside Digit's, or the climb to the crater lake on Bisoke at 3,711 metres. Keeping the trek on day two also means a spare day if weather or a reassignment moves things. If you want a second gorilla permit — and people who can afford it almost always say the second trek was the better one — make it four nights.

• 2–3 nightsNyungwe Forest

  One of the oldest montane rainforests in Africa and completely different in character from the Virungas. Two nights minimum: the canopy walkway suspended around 70 metres above the Igishigishigi trail, and a pre-dawn chimpanzee tracking start. Three nights lets you add the Cyamudongo forest chimp group, the Kamiranzovu marsh trail, or one of the thirteen primate species you have not yet seen — the Angolan colobus supergroups here run into the hundreds, which is a genuinely strange thing to stand underneath.

• 2 nightsAkagera National Park

  The comeback story. Lion were reintroduced in 2015 and eastern black rhino in 2017, making Akagera a Big Five park again after decades without either — and it is managed jointly by African Parks and the Rwanda Development Board, which shows. Two nights: one afternoon and one full day, with a boat trip on Lake Ihema for hippo, crocodile and shoebill, and a dawn drive on the northern plains for lion and the reintroduced rhino. It is a savannah palate-cleanser after a week of forest, and the contrast is the point.

• 2 nightsLake Kivu

  Rwanda's decompression chamber, and we build it in deliberately. Kivu has no crocodiles, no hippos and no bilharzia, which makes it one of the very few African lakes you can simply swim in without a risk conversation. Rubavu in the north pairs with Volcanoes; Karongi in the middle breaks the drive down to Nyungwe. Two nights of kayaking, coffee-plantation walks and doing nothing.

• 1–2 nightsKigali

  Do not treat Kigali as an airport. One night either side, and give at least two hours to the Kigali Genocide Memorial at Gisozi — it is unflinching, essential, and it reframes everything you see for the rest of the trip. Then the Nyamirambo Women's Centre walking tour, the Inema and Niyo art centres, and dinner somewhere in Kiyovu. Rwanda is a country you should try to understand, not just photograph.

Physically, more than people expect. Everything happens at altitude. Kigali is at 1,567 metres, the Volcanoes trailheads sit around 2,300 to 2,600 metres, and Bisoke tops out at 3,711 metres. Gorilla families move overnight and are not on a schedule, so a trek can be forty minutes of gentle walking or six hours of climbing through wet nettles on a 30-degree slope, and you do not find out which until you are on the trail. Guests who spend a fortnight walking hills before they come have a materially better day than guests who do not.

Logistically, less than people expect — but with two hard deadlines. Gorilla permits are capped, allocated per family per day, and peak-season dates genuinely do sell out six to twelve months ahead; the permit gets booked before anything else in your itinerary, and everything else is built around it. And the 7am Kinigi briefing does not wait, which means an early start from wherever you slept.

Practicalities: pack gaiters and gardening gloves, both for the nettles — the stinging nettle in the Virungas is not a joke. Waterproofs and boots you have already broken in. Long trousers. A minimum trekking age of 15 applies in Volcanoes, and if you have any flu-like symptoms you will not be allowed on the trail, because gorillas share our respiratory vulnerabilities. And leave the plastic bags at home; they are illegal and will be taken at the airport.