Frank Gardner: Gorilla Spotting From A Wheelchair
(The Telegraph)
January 3, 2013
KIGALI, RWANDA– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] In the damp, cool air halfway up a volcano in equatorial Africa, I smelt an odor I had never encountered before. Musty, pungent, tangy, hard to describe yet definitely overpowering. “We are close now,” whispered Augustin, the khaki-clad ranger assigned as our escort. “Please be very alert.” Every one of us who had trekked up the valley that morning was on tenterhooks, aware that something big was about to happen.
We had flown into Rwanda the day before from London, an exhausting 15-hour journey via Nairobi. My wife’s friend Karen had bid successfully at a charity raffle for a three-day gorilla trek, so my wife said, “Go on, you’ve always wanted to see the mountain gorillas; and let’s face it, this is not one for me.”
It was one of those insane now-or-never moments, blowing more than £2,000 on a mad 72-hour dash to a country that deserves weeks of anyone’s time, if not more. But back in the dark days in hospital after I was shot and disabled eight years ago, I remember thinking, “Damn! I wish I had gone to such-and-such a place before I lost the use of my legs.”
And here it was, a dream on a plate, a chance to see the world’s largest primate in its remote natural habitat with a tour company that commendably made light of my disability. “We’ll get you up there no problem,” I was assured via email. I was curious to see how.
Entire article:
Rwanda: Gorilla spotting from a wheelchair
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