At dawn, I watch the mist ascend above the canopy and move across it like restless gossamer, backlit by a rising, peach-glow sun. Witnessing this spectacle from a bench on the lawn outside my room makes me feel as if I’m in my own luxurious, private garden. This exclusivity is what makes Gishwati special. After breakfast, we roam our personal paradise among Jurassic-sized ferns and Symphonia hardwoods, spotting forest frogs on the ground and rainbow-coloured regal sunbirds overhead. Then we cool off beneath a waterfall that tumbles onto large boulders and spills into a river swarming with butterflies. The chimp population, which has more than doubled to 35, eludes us today, but our interaction with the golden monkey youngsters is so prolonged and intimate it more than makes up for it. They survey us from above, inching along with us through the canopy.
Fruit at SextantioAlex Barlow
A couple of hours later, we emerge from the forest and stroll back to the guesthouse, passing through treeless emerald hills dotted with the occasional makeshift cow herder hut. Though these pastures, with their picket fences and imported Friesian cows, have a green-and-pleasant-land appeal to them, their baldness offers a sobering clarity over what’s been lost. But the Rwandans are on the case: with 37 per cent of territory earmarked for environmental conservation, areas such as Volcanoes National Park are being expanded by almost a quarter. This is a country on a mission to manage its destiny. Having once stared into the abyss, it is now looking upwards and onwards. I think about the photographs in the Genocide Memorial in Kigali, of the many faces of the fallen, and I can see that those who buried them had actually, unwittingly, sowed seeds. With every newborn gorilla or hardwood sapling, Rwanda demonstrates humanity’s capacity for renewal.
One&Only Gorilla’s NestAlex Barlow
Where to stay in Rwanda
One&Only Nyungwe House and Gorilla’s Nest
On the outskirts of Nyungwe National Park, One&Only Nyungwe House is pitched among tea plantations. At the sister hotel, One&Only Gorilla’s Nest, near Volcanoes National Park, free standing wooden lodges look out onto soaring eucalyptus groves. Nyungwe House: doubles from about £1,815; Gorilla’s Nest: doubles from about £3,465; oneandonlyresorts.com
The Retreat, Kigali
American husbandandwife owners Alissa and Josh Ruxin have extended their boutique hotel, building eight secluded, Italiandesigned villas, each with a private plunge pool, on a hill overlooking Kigali. Doubles from about £413; heavenrwanda.com