Home · Booking terms
Booking terms
Written to be read rather than to be defended in an argument. If anything here is unclear, ask before you book, not after.
Draft The deposit and cancellation figures below are being finalised with our directors and will be fixed before we take any booking. Everything about permits is already firm, because those rules are not ours.
The gorilla permit is different from everything else
The Uganda Wildlife Authority takes the full permit fee at the time of booking and does not hold permits against a deposit. Once we buy your permit it is bought, in your name, for a named date and sector.
Permits are non-refundable. That is UWA's rule, not ours, and we cannot waive it. It is the single most important sentence on this page: if you cancel, the rest of the trip may be recoverable and the permit almost certainly is not. This is why travel insurance is a condition of booking.
Current permit cost for foreign non-residents is USD 800, and USD 600 in April, May and November. We charge you what UWA charges us and send you the reference number.
Confirming a trip
- We check permit availability for your dates first — everything else follows from it.
- We send a costed itinerary with every line shown, permits separately.
- You confirm in writing. A deposit secures the trip and pays for the permits.
- The balance is due before you travel.
Draft Exact deposit percentage and balance deadline to be confirmed.
Cancellation
If you cancel, we refund what we can actually recover from lodges and suppliers, minus the permits, which we cannot. We will show you the arithmetic rather than apply a percentage from a table you never read.
Draft A published cancellation ladder will replace this paragraph.
Insurance is required
You must hold travel insurance that covers medical treatment, emergency evacuation and trip cancellation. Gorilla trekking is strenuous walking at altitude in a remote place; evacuation from a forest trail is slow and expensive. Check that your policy covers the activity by name.
Health and the trek
You will not be allowed to approach the gorillas with visible symptoms of respiratory illness. This is a UWA rule that exists because gorillas catch human infections and die of them, and we support it without reservation. Whether a permit can be substituted in that situation is UWA's decision; we will make your case, and we cannot promise the outcome.
Things we may have to change
Roads wash out, parks close sectors, and UWA moves permits between families. If we have to change your itinerary we will tell you as soon as we know, explain why, and put you somewhere of the same standard or better. If a change makes the trip materially worse and we cannot fix it, we will discuss money rather than hide behind this page.
Payment
Payment is by bank transfer to the company account, in the company's name — never to a personal account, and never to an individual named in a message. If anyone ever asks you to send money anywhere else while claiming to be us, it is not us. Card and mobile-money payment is being set up and this section will say so when it works.
Complaints
Tell Titus, directly and immediately, while you are still in the country and something can be done about it. A problem raised on the third morning is usually fixable; the same problem raised in a review three weeks later is not.