Tours in Rwanda

Start in Kigali on a weekday morning and you notice the motorcycle taxis first, then the hills. The city is built across them, so every street seems to tilt, and from almost anywhere you can look across a valley to another ridge of rooftops. It is clean, calm and easy to walk in short stretches. Take your time with the coffee. Rwandan coffee is worth ordering more than once.

Kigali is also where you meet the country's harder history, and the memorial sites here are places many visitors choose to spend a quiet hour. Go to them with no other plans stacked behind. Afterwards, the craft markets, the cafes and the long evening light over the hills feel different, and that is part of understanding the place.

Then you leave the capital, and the road does the rest. You climb through terraced farms, banana groves and roadside stalls, with children waving from the verge. Up in the north, the volcanoes rise at the end of the road, cloaked in cloud more often than not. This is the home of the mountain gorillas, and it is the reason most people come. A trek means pushing through wet green undergrowth in boots you will be glad you broke in, then standing quietly near a family that barely seems to notice you. Plan it as a few days, not a day trip, because the drive and the early start are part of it.

Rwanda has more than the gorillas. Akagera in the east offers savannah and lake scenery, Nyungwe in the south-west has rainforest canopy and chimpanzees, and Lake Kivu in the west is a slow place to rest after the hills. We do not sell tours to all of them yet. If one of them is on your list, ask, and a local guide can put something together.