You can trek gorillas with limited mobility, but only Rwanda publishes a policy: Volcanoes National Park staff offer an arm to lean on, or a stretcher for wheelchair users. Uganda's sedan chair is not a UWA product and appears in no tariff, so a carried trek there is a private arrangement.
Yes, and the two countries answer the question very differently. In Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park the park service publishes an accessible-travel commitment: staff will provide a strong arm to lean on, or a stretcher for visitors confined to a wheelchair. In Uganda there is no official equivalent. Carried transport is not a Uganda Wildlife Authority product and appears in no UWA tariff or tracking guideline, so anything of that kind is a private arrangement with community porter teams, which has to be organised and confirmed for your date before you book.
A sedan chair is a seat slung on two long poles, carried by a team of local porters who rotate the load between them on the way up and the way down. It is widely nicknamed the "African helicopter". The same idea appears in a flatter form as a stretcher, which is what Rwanda's park service describes for visitors who use a wheelchair.
It is not a wheelchair-accessible path. There is no path. The chair exists precisely because the ground cannot be rolled over: Bwindi and the Virungas are steep, root-tangled, often slick, and the gorillas move overnight, so the route is improvised each morning by trackers. What the chair buys you is not comfort but access — being carried over terrain you could not walk.
Be honest with yourself about what being carried feels like. It is bumpy, it is public, and it involves a team of porters working hard on your behalf for several hours, rotating the load between them. Some travellers find that a straightforward trade; others find it uncomfortable in ways they did not anticipate. It is worth thinking about before you commit, not at the trailhead.
The two countries sit in genuinely different positions here, and it matters for how you plan.
| Question | Rwanda (Volcanoes National Park) | Uganda (Bwindi and Mgahinga) |
|---|---|---|
| Official position on assisted access | Published. The Rwanda Development Board's accessible travel guidance states park staff will provide a strong arm to lean on, or a stretcher for visitors confined to a wheelchair. | Not published. Carried transport appears in no Uganda Wildlife Authority tariff or tracking guideline. |
| Published price | None. RDB publishes no fee for the service. | None. UWA lists no sedan chair fee. |
| How it is arranged | By contacting the park directly, in advance. | Not by the park. Descriptions of chairs arranged with porter teams at the trailhead come from operator sources rather than from UWA, so availability has to be checked for your date rather than assumed. |
| Porters | RDB confirms porters are available to carry bags and cameras and to offer a helping hand on the route. | Porters are community-run and priced locally; no gorilla porter fee appears in the UWA tariff. |
| Gorilla permit, foreign non-resident | USD 1,500 per person per day (RDB). | USD 800, or USD 600 in April, May and November under UWA's low-season rate. UWA states low-season permits cannot be rescheduled. |
Rwanda's advantage is simply that the commitment is written down by the authority that runs the park. In Uganda nothing is written down. That does not mean nothing can be arranged, but it does mean the arrangement carries no official guarantee and no published price, which puts the burden of confirming it on your operator before you pay for a permit.
Neither UWA nor RDB publishes a price, so any figure you see quoted online is an operator estimate rather than an official tariff. We do not publish one either. A carried trek is priced locally rather than from a rate card, and the figure depends on the number of carriers involved and on the sector — so we confirm it in writing when we quote, and it sits on your invoice as a named line rather than disappearing into a package price.
What you can plan around are the fixed costs. The permit is the permit whether you walk or are carried: USD 800 in Uganda for a foreign non-resident, dropping to USD 600 in April, May and November under the low-season rate UWA introduced in February 2026, and USD 1,500 per person per day in Rwanda. UWA states that low-season permits cannot be rescheduled, which is a real consideration if your health is variable. Rwanda publishes a 30% low-season discount from November to May, but it is conditional on combining the trek with a qualifying stay at Akagera or Nyungwe — two nights at one of those parks with a paid activity, or a night at each — so it is worth checking if your dates are flexible.
Uganda park entrance for Bwindi and Mgahinga is USD 40 per adult per 24 hours, though the gorilla permit rate already includes entrance on the day you track. One date to keep in view: UWA's revised tariff takes effect on 1 January 2027, and gorilla tracking is unchanged in it — the standard permit stays at USD 800, and the same circular is the source of the April, May and November low-season rate of USD 600, which UWA states cannot be rescheduled. Several other primate permits do rise on that date, which matters if you are weighing an alternative to a gorilla trek.
UWA describes gorilla tracking in Bwindi as requiring moderate fitness and says treks may last between two and seven hours, occasionally most of a day, depending on how far the family has moved overnight. Nobody knows which it will be when you set out.
Two other things shape the day physically. Altitude: the Ruhija sector of Bwindi sits at around 2,400 metres, and Volcanoes National Park spans roughly 2,400 to 4,507 metres. Cold: long-term monitoring at Ruhija records a mean daily maximum of 19°C and a mean daily minimum of 14°C, so sitting still in a chair in wet forest is colder than walking. Layers matter more for a carried guest than for a walking one — our note on what to pack for a gorilla trek covers the rest.
If mobility is tied to a medical condition, altitude, cold and duration are questions for your doctor or a travel clinic before you book, not for a tour operator. We will tell you honestly what the day involves; we will not tell you whether you should do it.
In Uganda, permits are sold by date and by designated entry point — Buhoma, Ruhija, Nkuringo or Rushaga in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, or Ntebeko in Mgahinga — and not by gorilla family. Your family is allocated on the morning of the trek. That has a practical consequence for anyone with limited mobility: the sector is the only variable you can control at booking, so choosing it well, and making sure the warden knows your situation at the morning briefing, is where the real planning happens.
Wardens can take reduced mobility into account when allocating families on the morning, but no authority publishes this as a policy and it is entirely at the park's discretion — which is why we flag it in advance rather than promise it. Our comparison of Uganda versus Rwanda for gorilla trekking goes into the wider trade-offs. On mobility grounds specifically, Volcanoes National Park is the one with a stated policy, while Uganda has the lower permit price — USD 800, or USD 600 in April, May and November, when the permit cannot be rescheduled.
All of them. Being carried changes how you reach the gorillas, not what happens when you get there.
Sometimes it isn't, and saying so is more useful than selling you a chair. Reasonable alternatives, all with published authority fees:
You can also build a trip where one traveller treks and the rest of the party does something else that day. That is a perfectly normal way to shape an itinerary, and it is worth raising early rather than treating it as a fallback.
Foreign non-residents cannot buy Uganda gorilla or chimpanzee permits directly. UWA sells them only through operators licensed by the Uganda Tourism Board, and states it has no agents inside or outside Uganda. Since 1 March 2026 there is also no free hold period: UWA suspended the seven-day reservation window, so a permit is secured only on full payment at the time of booking. Dates for a specific sector, in a specific month, are gone when they are gone.
Two consequences worth knowing. A late reschedule of a gorilla permit is charged at 25% of the permit fee, and tracking from a different sector than the one booked is charged at 50% — which is why the sector decision has to be right first time. And UWA's low-season permits, at USD 600 in April, May and November against the standard USD 800, cannot be rescheduled at all.
Tell us about mobility at enquiry stage, not after the deposit. It changes which sector we book, which lodge we recommend, how we brief the warden, and whether a chair team can be arranged for your trailhead and date. Start your safari plan, read more about the day itself on our gorilla trekking page, or get in touch and describe your situation plainly. We will tell you what is possible and what is not.
Safari planning team
The planning team answers permit, timing and logistics questions every day, and writes up the answers that come back most often. Everything published here is checked against current park authority rates and the routes our own vehicles drive.
