Nyungwe Forest: Rwanda Beyond the Gorillas

Almost everyone who comes to Rwanda comes for the gorillas, and almost everyone leaves having heard, too late, about the forest in the south they should have made time for. Nyungwe is one of the oldest and largest mountain rainforests in Africa, a vast, dripping, ancient tangle of a place that predates the last ice age, and it is the reason a Rwanda trip does not have to be only two days in the volcanoes. It offers chimpanzees, a canopy walk suspended above the trees, thirteen species of primate, and some of the best forest birding on the continent.

Here is why Nyungwe deserves more than the footnote it usually gets.

An ancient forest

The first thing to grasp about Nyungwe is its age, because it shapes everything that lives there.

This is an old forest, one of the few in Africa to have survived the climatic upheavals of the ice ages more or less intact, which is why it holds such an extraordinary richness of life. Now protected as a national park and recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site, it covers a huge sweep of mountain rainforest in the south-west of the country, thick with orchids and ferns and towering hardwoods, threaded with rivers and waterfalls, and almost permanently wrapped in mist. Walking into it is like stepping back into a much older Africa, before the savannahs, when the whole region was forest.

The chimpanzees

Nyungwe’s headline primate is the chimpanzee, and tracking them here is a genuine alternative to the famous forests of Uganda and Tanzania.

The forest holds a sizeable chimpanzee population, and tracking them means an early start and a walk through steep, wet forest, following the sounds of the community, the hoots and screams carrying through the canopy. They are wilder and a little less habituated than the chimps of Kibale, which makes them harder to reach and the sighting less guaranteed, but also lends the experience a real sense of the untamed. For a traveller already in Rwanda for the gorillas, adding chimpanzees in Nyungwe means meeting two of our closest relatives in a single, compact country. Our gorilla and chimpanzee trekking guidance explains how the different forests compare.

The canopy walk

Nyungwe has one experience that no other forest in the region offers, and it is worth the trip on its own.

Suspended high above a valley is East Africa’s only canopy walkway, a swaying bridge strung between towers that carries you out into the treetops, level with the upper canopy where so much of the forest’s life actually happens. From up there you look down into the crowns of ancient trees and out across an unbroken sea of forest rolling to the horizon, with birds and monkeys moving through the branches below and around you. It is mildly thrilling if you are wary of heights and simply magnificent if you are not, and it gives you a perspective on a rainforest that ground level never can.

Thirteen kinds of primate

Beyond the chimps, Nyungwe is one of the great primate forests of Africa, and the variety is astonishing.

Thirteen primate species live here, and the one that most surprises visitors is the Angolan colobus, which moves through Nyungwe in some of the largest troops of any colobus anywhere, hundreds of animals travelling together through the canopy in a spectacle you can genuinely track and watch. There are also L’Hoest’s monkeys, grey-cheeked mangabeys, blue monkeys and more, so that a walk in Nyungwe is rarely without something moving in the trees. For anyone who came to Rwanda thinking only of gorillas, the sheer primate abundance of the south is a revelation.

A birder’s forest

Nyungwe is also, quietly, one of the finest birding destinations in Africa, and serious birders travel a long way for it.

The forest holds a great number of species, including many found only in the Albertine Rift, that band of mountains along the western edge of the region, which is one of the most important areas for endemic birds on the continent. The great blue turaco, an improbable, enormous, brilliantly coloured bird, is among the prizes, along with a long list of rarities that draw dedicated birders. Even for travellers with no particular interest in birds, the colour and variety in the canopy are part of what makes a walk here so alive. The BirdLife International network recognises the Albertine Rift, and Nyungwe within it, as globally important for birds.

Where it fits in a Rwanda trip

Nyungwe’s one drawback is its position, and it is worth being honest about it.

The forest lies in the far south-west, several hours by road from Kigali and from the volcanoes in the north, so it asks for time than a short gorilla-only trip allows. But that is exactly the argument for giving Rwanda more than a couple of days. A fuller trip can run from the gorillas of the Volcanoes in the north, down through the country to the chimpanzees and canopy of Nyungwe in the south, taking in Lake Kivu along the way, and that journey is a far richer experience of Rwanda than a flying visit to the gorillas alone. You can see how the pieces connect across our Rwanda destinations.

The waterfalls and the walks

Nyungwe is a forest made for walking, and beyond the chimps and the canopy, it offers a network of trails that reward travellers willing to explore on foot.

A web of paths threads through the forest, ranging from gentle strolls to full-day hikes, and one of the most popular leads to a waterfall tumbling through the trees, reached by a trail that winds past countless species of orchid and fern and the constant possibility of primates overhead. Walking Nyungwe is a slower, more immersive way to experience it than any single activity, and it suits the traveller who wants to feel the forest rather than simply tick off its headline sights. The air is cool, the birdsong constant, and the sense of being deep inside something ancient and alive is total.

A tea-country approach

The journey to Nyungwe is part of its character, and it passes through some of the most beautiful cultivated landscapes in Rwanda.

The road south climbs through hills terraced with tea, the bright green bushes running in neat contours across the slopes, dotted with the figures of pickers at work. Rwanda’s tea, like its coffee, has built a serious reputation, and the plantations that fringe Nyungwe are both lovely to travel through and a working part of the local economy. Some estates welcome visitors, and pausing to understand how the tea is grown and processed adds a human dimension to the wild forest beyond. It is a reminder that Rwanda is a lived-in, cultivated country as much as a wild one, and the contrast between the ordered tea slopes and the ancient chaos of the forest is one of the pleasures of the south.

When to go

Nyungwe can be visited year-round, and knowing how the seasons play out helps you plan the forest into a trip.

The drier stretches make the forest trails less slippery and the chimpanzee tracking a little easier underfoot, which is why they are the most popular, but this is rainforest, and it is wet to some degree in every season, which is precisely what keeps it so green and alive. The wetter months bring fewer visitors and a forest at its most lush, with the waterfalls in full flow. The chimps, the colobus and the birds are present throughout, so the choice is more about your appetite for mud than about what you will see. Whatever the month, good boots, a waterproof layer and a willingness to get a little wet are worth more than waiting for a dry day that a rainforest will never quite give you.

The reason to stay longer

Rwanda has built its fame on a single hour with the gorillas, and it is an hour worth every superlative. But a country is more than its most famous experience, and Nyungwe is the proof.

Give Rwanda the extra days it takes to reach the south, and the gorilla trip becomes a proper journey through one of Africa’s most beautiful and surprising countries, with an ancient rainforest, chimpanzees, a walk through the treetops, huge troops of colobus and some of the best birding on the continent added to it. Most people only hear about Nyungwe once they are home. The travellers who make time for it come away understanding that the gorillas were the beginning of Rwanda, not the whole of it.

If you want your Rwanda to include the forest as well as the volcanoes, tell us, and we will build Nyungwe into the route.