I travelled across the world to Uganda to find WILD gorillas🇺🇬

Auto-captioned from the film, lightly cleaned. Elena's words, not edited prose.

My sister and I have arrived in East Africa to try to track and find wild gorillas in the Bendy impenetrable forest. Currently in Rwanda specifically just to briefly visit Kgali, the capital here to eat and drink the local coffee and also learn about the troubled and devastating history here. And then we're headed across the border deep into Uganda. We're now headed to a coffee shop because Rwanda is very much known for the coffee beans they produce here. And as a coffee lover, I am very excited. And I'm so ready for some caffeine.

Oh, this is kind of a sexy Brooklyn. Which way is that you? Good. So, Sage and I are here in the market. Slightly overstimulated. I mean, I've been in many a market and many a region of the world and every time I'm slightly shocked at how incredibly overstimulating it is. There is a lot of different kind of craftsmanship going on. The journey continues. There is so much food. So much potatoes. Rwanda. Morning from Rwanda. We are on a 4hour drive. Actually 6 hour drive. Sorry. Yeah. 6 hours. Yes. What? And we got Uganda.

We are now headed to walk across the border from Rwanda to Uganda. About to go to customs, which you can't really film. So, got to be careful there. Got our visas. We got our visas, our vaccine. Had an incident. I had to get my East African tourist visa like stamped. And the lovely, beautiful woman behind the counter thought I was a I was misgendered. Oh no. God forbid a woman have short hair and an athletic team. We have made it to the Ugandan side of the border. We're very excited cuz this signals the start to our gorilla journey.

Yeah, I can't wait. Which has been a lifelong dream. I'm obsessed with gorillas. And I did the Serengeti and I've done a tiger safari in India. Now I need to do a gorilla safari. I'm like, "All right, I can retire." We learned quite about the Rwanda genocide yesterday, which I obviously didn't want to film just to be respectful of something that is so heavy and sobering. The sites and the memorials are incredibly sacred and there are better voices to speak to it than me. So, I'm really grateful we got to do that.

And now I'm very excited to learn more about history and culture and food, all the things we enjoy. All right, back in the car. And on that note, let's have a little history lesson. Long before modern borders, this land was home to powerful kingdoms like Uganda, Bonoro, and Enco. These kingdoms helped shape the region with their own political systems and rich traditions. And then everything changed in the late 1800s when European colonizers arrived. The British built railways and reorganized the kingdom system and they also imposed new divisions and extracted resources for their own benefit.

Uganda finally gained independence in 1962, but the decades that followed were turbulent. The country fell into a brutal dictatorship marked by violence. After the dictator was overthrown, the country struggled through war instability until the National Resistance Movement took over in 1968. Since then, Uganda has transformed. It's a young country. Most people are under 18 and it's incredibly diverse with over 56 tribes and more than 40 languages spoken. And as modern cities are buzzing with energy and culture and life. And then there's the magic of Uganda's wilderness. In the early 1900s, the Bindi and Penetra National Park was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site to protect one of the last remaining populations of mountain gorillas.

At that time, fewer than 300 gorillas were left in the wild. But today, thanks to protection efforts and responsible tourism, the population has actually climbed over 1,000 gorillas, while local communities also benefit from the jobs tourism brings in. It's such a privilege to explore a bit of Uganda myself, and I can't wait to see what this trip has in store. We're on our way to our lodge, but we have flat tires. It's all part of the adventure. Let's see what's going on here. Uh-oh. It's not looking very good. The new girl passed too close to the sun and now you're on rural Uganda with a flat.

All looking at us being like, "Excuse me, what's going on?" Shimmy the worries away. Crowd coming to watch us. How are we doing? Great. I'm very impressed. I don't know how to change a tire. I have no help. Wow. Our hero saved the day. Fix. Got caught in the rain, but definitely got caught in the rain. Harley adventure. What's a trip without a good travel story? Truly. Thank you. That was very impressive. Very nervous that we're on turbos. They stood in my life. Thank you. Hello. We made it. Barely. We made it.

We're here at Gorilla Heights lodge. It was beautiful. This is one of the benefits of booking a premium intrapment. Dare I say we have a visa problems at the border and then we had a flat tire. So it's a few hours past what would be the normal preferred time and your girl is hungry. Yeah. Oh, listen to that. Hello. Hi. Hello. Oh, are we in focus? Before we get any further, I need to take a second to talk about today's sponsor, Arllo. Airlow is truly one of my like favorite travel hacks.

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And I have a little code for you as well so you can get $3 off your first eIM. Check out Aerolo and stay connected no matter where you are. It is currently like 10:15 p.m. and we have to be up at 5:00 a.m. to start our hike tomorrow. I'm getting flashbacks to Mount Kamjara, but the bougie version because I'm staying at a beautiful hotel. Yeah, we're getting up bright and early. We're on a hike and it's very unclear if it's going to be like 2 hours or like 6 hours. I'm definitely feeling nervous.

I watched some videos before about how hard the hike can be depending on like the route you take. So, like I'm hoping I'm in shape for this right now. We have our hiking gear. We have our hiking boots. Everything is all laid out in a cute pile ready to go. And I'm so excited. Yeah. Also expecting to be quite wet and rainy, which should be really interesting. Might be slippy slidy. And I'm also genuinely terrified of seeing the gorillas up close. So, we'll see how that goes. Like, I think they're going to be so close.

Yeah. I'm so excited. It feels like this is the night before the day that we've been waiting for Christmas. The day that we essentially flew across the world for. All right. We need to get some rest. Goodbye. ready to rock. Let's go see some gorillas. Morning. We have made it to the impenetrable tropical where the journey will begin to begin. We have no idea how long the hike is going to be, but excited to get into the jungle. We're about to get a a briefing from some of like the local guides on what to expect.

I'm excited. It's gorilla time. happens to be the first group that was habituated from Shaga. In this family, they are 14 individuals. So, what we learned is that there's trackers out right now finding the gorillas. So, we'll figure out where exactly we need to go and that will determine whether our hike is going to be like an hour or like 5 hours. Backpacked up. We had the opportunity to get porters, but I was like, I haven't really done a hike like this and I feel like I need the backpack to complete it.

I will say porters are a great way to support the locals. So, you don't have to be strong. You don't have to prove anything. We also learned our gorilla family is the oldest one in the park that they've been habituating. They've been having humans come around them for the last like 30 years, which is super cool. Let's go see them. Almost. No, I wish I did. And I'm on the road. I have almost space planted so many times. You see the the good news from the trackers because from here they are not very far.

So, we are making our way through. And they do have, if you come, armed guards in the front and the back. Very similar to when I did a safari walk on the Serengeti, but it's not for shooting anyone or anything. It is if animals, specifically elephants in the jungle, get too close, they would just shoot into the air to scare them off. And up we go. Look at this. See, apparently we're only like 20 minutes away. Yeah. Oh my god. Oh my god. We see that. No way. I am so excited.

She's saying the condition where's the big the conditions are really good right now because the vegetation is low. So, we can get a bit closer, but we actually have to put on masks because our DNA is so close to the ground. We can transmit diseases if we're not careful. Here we go. Let's go. Crazy. There's one 2 ft away from this huge gorilla. Oh my gosh. insane for sure. We are just going deeper and deeper into the jungle. The gorillas are getting bored every like 5 minutes and they move and then we follow them.

I feel a little embarrassed like we're we're shamelessly stalking but we are literally like in the middle of the forest right now. No trail in sight. Thank god for these machetes honestly. All right, the journey continues. There's a big one here. Big one here. There's some babies on back here. This is a big statement to make cuz I have traveled a lot in my life, but this is without a doubt one of the top coolest experiences I have ever had. I haven't done as many cool things as Lena has, but this is taking the number one spot.

All right, we're leaving officially and that was absolutely spectacular. Oh, I have to go around. That's That's embarrassing. Oh hello. Oh my goodness. Chameleon and it's endemic to this area. You only find us in two areas. That is Guy and then Mount Renori. So it's found in the montaneous areas. So, we have had the most exceptional grill experience. And now to finish off the day, we're going into the Binga Forest to learn about the Tua or Batwa people or the Pygmy people who were original natives that lived in the jungle.

They don't anymore for a variety of reasons, but they're still doing a bit of like a cultural and historical kind of explanation for us to show how they used to live. The Tuah are one of the oldest indigenous groups in Central Africa, having lived for thousands of years in the forest as hunter gatherers. It wasn't all the way until the 1990s that their lives changed dramatically when conservation laws evicted them from their ancestral forest to create national parks. Today, they often face landlessness and poverty, but they continue to preserve their culture, and tourism has become a key source of economic support.

just had a very cool little lesson about the BWA people who lived here and now they're going to show us some of their crafts because they used to be like hunter and gatherers and they never really fully transitioned to the way of farming. So now they've kind of transitioned to craftsmanship. So let's check out some of their crafts. Handwoven. Yeah, this is all handwoven. Okay. Obsessed with these little gorillas. Are these carved from wood? Yeah, handcarved. There's so many amazing options. Trust your instinct. I'll put it on top. Trusting your instinct.

Our haul for today. Yeah. Got our goods. Thank you. The most popular bar in town. Cheers. Doing a monkey gym. Do you know fruit? What did you think, Sage? Um, I can only have like half of it and I feel ill now. High five. It was tough. All right, back we go. I think you were trying to poison us with that. It is strong. Really strong. Super strong. We've made it back to our hotel. It is the final evening. I'm still feeling that banana gin courarssing through my veins. Before we leave, we wanted to ask our incredible guide Vivian just a few questions.

What's incredible about Intrepid is they go out of their way to for one like include sustainable practices, prioritizing like local development, but also hiring female guides, which is just cool. I feel like truly from every perspective, the travel industry is still pretty heavily male. And Vivian is literally 27, I'm 28. Like, she's my age. And so I'm like, I want to know what it's like as a gal my age living in Uganda. What's life like? Like that's our favorite thing in videos. It's like I always want to learn from a local what it's actually like to live there.

Cuz like we're just a bunch of tourists. What do you always say? It's a Len in Uganda. Let's explore Uganda like a local with a local. Everyone welcome. Vivian, thanks for coming. From someone who knows nothing about Uganda, what do you wish they knew? I love the culture. So, Uganda is a very diverse country with about 56 tribes. How many languages do you speak fluently? Three. Wow. But I can I can understand about 10 languages. What? That's crazy. 10. 10 languages. Oh, you said you want to become a lawyer someday, maybe.

Yeah. I'm really focusing becoming a lawyer because being in a male-dominated industry, I want to also have that part of me to fight for ladies rights. not only in tourism but also in many other industries across the nation and do you feel like being like a female tour guide is like the first step I am one of the few female tour guides in Uganda and being one of the few is an opportunity that I don't take granted for and I really appreciate intrafeed for giving me such a platform women are coming up not only as tour guides but also entrepreneurs conservationists ambassadors so women are really growing that's so interesting to hear cuz even as travelers there's so many more women now who traveling solo or traveling without partners, but I'm like, where are the female guides?

So, I think it's so cool. According to the World Tourism Organization, 60 70%age are women travelers. Having a female guide on board adds so much value absolutely to the ladies that are traveling. I love it. Go women travelers. Go team. Nothing like some girls exchanging their Instagrams. It's a universal language.