Photo: Byekwaso Blasio · CC BY-SA 4.0
Mgahinga Gorilla National Park
Uganda's smallest park — gorillas, golden monkeys and three Virunga volcanoes.
About
At 33.7 square kilometres, Mgahinga is the smallest national park in Uganda and the densest. Three Virunga volcanoes — Muhabura, Gahinga and Sabinyo — rise from its bamboo slopes, where the Nyakagezi gorilla family and Uganda's only habituated golden monkeys live. The Batwa Trail, led by guides from the forest's original inhabitants, ends in the Garama Cave.
Highlights
- Nyakagezi gorilla trek
- Golden monkey tracking
- Sabinyo three-country summit
- Batwa Trail
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Stories from Mgahinga Gorilla National Park
Mgahinga Gorilla National Park
The Smallest Park With the Longest Memory
The road out of Kisoro climbs for ten kilometres and then simply stops, because ahead of it three volcanoes have arranged themselves across the horizon like an argument nobody won. Muhabura wears cloud as a habit. Gahinga squats between its neighbours, broad and unhurried. Sabinyo — the name means "old man's teeth" — breaks into a jagged crown of peaks so worn that the mountain looks less like geology than dentistry. Somewhere on their lower slopes, in a belt of bamboo that hisses when the wind moves through it, eleven mountain gorillas are having breakfast.
Torch Media Africa · 19 Sept 2026 · 5 min read
Mgahinga Gorilla National Park
Between Three Volcanoes: Uganda's Smallest Park Guards Its Rarest Treasures
The mist comes down off Sabinyo before the birds have finished waking, and for a moment the bamboo forest at the base of Uganda's smallest national park looks less like a wilderness than a held breath. Somewhere above the cloud line, three extinct volcanoes stand shoulder to shoulder against the Rwandan and Congolese borders, their slopes still warm with the old violence that built them and now given over entirely to gorillas, golden monkeys, and the people who have tracked this ground for generations. This is Mgahinga, and despite being barely the size of a modest American county, it may be the most quietly extraordinary square mile of Uganda's tourism map.
Torch Media Africa · 19 Sept 2026 · 4 min read
Mgahinga Gorilla National Park
In Uganda's Smallest Park, Giants and Gold Share the Same Slopes
Mist rolls down the flanks of three dormant volcanoes before dawn breaks over Kisoro district, and by the time it burns off, a ranger somewhere on the lower bamboo line has already found fresh gorilla nests. This is Mgahinga Gorilla National Park, tucked into Uganda's far southwestern corner where the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo meet inside the Virunga Massif. At just 33.7 square kilometers, it is the smallest national park in the country — smaller than some private ranches elsewhere on the continent — yet it holds an outsized claim on the imagination of travelers: it is the only place in Uganda where the endangered golden monkey can be tracked, and one of only three parks nationwide where mountain gorillas still climb through living forest.
Torch Media Africa · 19 Sept 2026 · 4 min read