Mountain Gorillas
Photographed By Percy Fernandez
It was a Wednesday afternoon, deep inside the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in the Rushaga sector in South West Uganda, after walking for close to 8 hours, that I came face to face with this Silverback, grand patriarch of the Kahungye Gorilla family of 16 members.
The previous evening, I asked Lydia who owns the Nkuringo Gorilla Lodge if it was possible to get a habituation permit the next day instead the usual one hour permit which I already had. One phone call and we drove past the picturesque Rubuguri village to the Rushaga sector headquarters get the permit. I met Bosco from Uganda Wildlife Authority who was happy to know that I was from India. Someday, he said, he wanted to travel to India to see the tigers. Till then he was happy watching Hindi movies on his mobile phone. Back in the lodge that night at dinner, Wesley, the most affable boy I've known, quietly cautioned me for a long haul the next day.
I set out in the dark at 0530 after breakfast with backpack full of gear, a cheese sandwich, banana, and half a litre of water. Before first light, I arrived in Nyiguru, at the edge of the forest and was waiting for the guides, rangers and trackers. Mandela Salim met me with his team-two rangers and five trackers. The mission was to track the Bikingi group of gorillas that are still under the process of habituation. We started walking at ten past seven. For the first four hours, we had tell-tale signs of their nest and poop but no signs of them. It must have been around 11, we spotted two juvenile males from the Bikingi family on the edge of a long fallen tree. Extremely shy, gave one look at us and vanished into the forest. By noon, I was exhausted to my marrow and my pack weighed a ton. We branched out into two teams and without walkies it made the communication all the more difficult when mobile phones went out of coverage inside the impenetrable forest. For some time, we were incommunicado. At around 1'o clock, we heard the calls of our trackers. I knew thy were not very far but was not sure if they found the gorillas. When we arrived at the spot, we found the Kahungye family resting after lunch under a thick undergrowth. They were 16 of them. You let us know when you want to leave, said Mandela with big smile on his face. We must have spent close to 4 hours watching them rest, play, up on the trees, tearing away branches, hoot and beat their chest. This little one even walked up to me, just touching distance while another juvenile almost playfully slapped the ground near where I was sitting. It was extremely tough trying to get a clear frontal shot of the Silverback as they were on the move. The thick forest and virtually no trail made it extremely challenging. The dense foliage, canopy and difficult light conditions added to the misery.
The trackers guessed a trail that the Silverback would move towards and we had positioned ourselves. And it so happened, the Silverback gently ambled towards us. It was right in front of me. Mandela had my back and I remembered what he had told me before we set out into the forest. To remain calm. Face to face, just a few feet part. The Silverback looked me in the eye and stopped on his tracks. This was the most visceral experience of my life. Up close with your nearest ancestor.
At the heart of the image. With Nikon. Z9.
