Kahuzi-Biega National Park: The Complete Guide to Eastern Lowland Gorilla Trekking in DR Congo

Kahuzi-Biega National Park is DR Congo’s site for trekking eastern lowland gorillas near Bukavu. Get current access status, costs, and safer Rwanda options today.

Kahuzi-Biega National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in South Kivu province, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and it is the world’s primary trekking destination for the eastern lowland gorilla, also called Grauer’s gorilla, the largest living primate on Earth. The park sits roughly 30 kilometers west of the city of Bukavu, on the western shore of Lake Kivu, and covers close to 6,000 square kilometers of highland and lowland rainforest joined by a narrow forest corridor. It was gazetted in 1970, and organized gorilla trekking has run there, in various forms, since 1973, longer than gorilla tourism has existed anywhere else in Africa. Five family groups have historically been habituated for tourism, led by well-documented silverbacks including Chimanuka and Mpungwe, out of roughly nine distinct family groups known to exist within the park. Unlike the mountain gorillas trekked in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park and Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Kahuzi-Biega’s gorillas live in warmer, lower-altitude equatorial forest, and a trek here is typically less strenuous, altitude-wise, than a mountain gorilla hike.

As of late August 2026, however, that background must be considered alongside a critical, plainly stated caveat: the city of Bukavu, the only realistic gateway to the park, has been under the control of the Rwanda-backed M23/AFC armed coalition since February 2025, and active fighting continues in the surrounding hills of South Kivu. The US State Department currently rates South Kivu province at its highest travel-risk level, Do Not Travel, and Rwanda Gorilla Expeditions does not include Kahuzi-Biega in any bookable, fixed-date itinerary at this time. This guide covers what the park is, what a trek there has normally involved, the honest, current state of access, and what we recommend instead if you’re researching gorilla trekking destinations today.

Where Kahuzi-Biega National Park Is, and What Makes It Different

Kahuzi-Biega National Park lies entirely within South Kivu province, in the far eastern reaches of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in a landscape shaped by the same Albertine Rift geology that produces Rwanda’s Virunga volcanoes, though the two ranges are not directly connected. The park’s boundary sits roughly 30 kilometers west of Bukavu, South Kivu’s provincial capital, which itself occupies a dramatic position on the southern tip of Lake Kivu, directly across the water and the international border from Rwanda’s Cyangugu/Rusizi. This proximity to Rwanda has historically made Kahuzi-Biega logistically reachable for travelers already in the region for mountain gorilla trekking, a detail that matters throughout the rest of this guide.

Two Sectors, One Park: Highland and Lowland

Kahuzi-Biega covers close to 6,000 square kilometers, but that figure understates how differently its two halves function. A smaller highland sector of roughly 600 square kilometers, immediately west of Bukavu, contains the park’s ranger headquarters at Tshivanga and Lwiro, its network of gorilla trekking trails, and effectively all of the tourism infrastructure that has ever existed here. A much larger lowland sector extends far to the west into dense, remote equatorial rainforest, connected to the highland sector by a narrow, roughly 7.4-kilometer forest corridor. The lowland sector has never had meaningful tourism infrastructure and has, for decades, been affected by illegal mining, poaching, and armed-group presence more severely than the highland sector. When anyone discusses “visiting Kahuzi-Biega,” including this guide, they mean the highland sector exclusively.

Kahuzi and Biega: The Two Volcanoes Behind the Name

The park takes its name from Mount Kahuzi (3,308 meters) and Mount Biega (2,790 meters), two extinct volcanoes rising from the highland sector’s forest that give the terrain its distinctive, rolling shape. Unlike Rwanda’s active volcanic chain, neither peak is climbed as a standalone activity the way Bisoke or Karisimbi are in Volcanoes National Park; they function mainly as a scenic backdrop and a namesake. The highland forest itself moves through several distinct zones as elevation changes, from dense primary rainforest and bamboo lower down to montane forest and open bog higher up, a structure that supports the park’s exceptional biodiversity, including forest elephants, chimpanzees, more than 340 recorded bird species, and, at the center of it all, the eastern lowland gorilla.

The Eastern Lowland Gorilla and Kahuzi-Biega’s Habituated Families

Kahuzi-Biega exists, in its modern tourism form, because of a single animal: the eastern lowland gorilla, Gorilla beringei graueri, also widely known as Grauer’s gorilla. It is one of two subspecies of eastern gorilla (the other being the mountain gorilla, which is trekked in Rwanda and Uganda), and it is the largest living primate on Earth, with mature silverbacks reaching up to 250 kilograms, noticeably heavier and more thickset than their mountain gorilla cousins. Grauer’s gorillas live almost exclusively in the lowland and montane rainforests of eastern DRC, and Kahuzi-Biega has served as the species’ flagship protected area and primary trekking site since organized visits began there in 1973, two decades before Rwanda opened Volcanoes National Park to regular tourism. The subspecies is classified as Critically Endangered; range-wide numbers have fallen sharply since the 1990s under sustained pressure from poaching, artisanal mining encroachment, and repeated armed conflict across its habitat.

The Five Habituated Families

Researchers have identified roughly nine distinct eastern lowland gorilla family groups within Kahuzi-Biega’s highland sector, of which five have historically been habituated closely enough to tolerate visitors at trekking range:

How an Eastern Lowland Gorilla Trek Normally Differs From a Mountain Gorilla Trek

Under ordinary operating conditions, a Kahuzi-Biega gorilla trek differs from a Rwanda or Uganda mountain gorilla trek in a few practical ways worth understanding, even while the park itself is inaccessible. Elevation is the biggest factor: trekking happens at roughly 1,500 to 2,700 meters in the highland sector’s rainforest, meaningfully lower and warmer than Volcanoes National Park’s bamboo and Hagenia zones above 2,400 meters, which tends to make the walking itself less strenuous, even if trek duration, commonly two to six hours, can run comparably long. Group sizes and rules mirror the regional standard: a maximum of eight visitors per family, a minimum age of 15, and a one-hour observation window once the gorillas are found, all designed to limit stress on the animals. And because Grauer’s gorillas are physically larger and range through denser lowland vegetation than mountain gorillas, encounters can feel visually different: thicker forest, closer cover, and a subspecies most travelers have never seen represented in wildlife media the way mountain gorillas are.

Kahuzi-Biega National Park’s Current Access and Security Situation

Everything above describes how Kahuzi-Biega functions, or has functioned, as a gorilla trekking destination. What follows is the part of this guide that matters most for anyone actually planning travel, and we’re going to state it as plainly as the facts warrant rather than the way a number of tour-operator websites currently present it.

Bukavu Has Been Under Armed Group Control Since February 2025

On 15 February 2025, the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group and its Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC) coalition partners captured Bukavu, South Kivu’s provincial capital and the only realistic gateway city to Kahuzi-Biega National Park, days after also seizing Bukavu’s Kavumu airport. As of late August 2026, more than eighteen months later, Bukavu remains under M23/AFC control, and active fighting continues in the surrounding hills of South Kivu, including clashes near Kavumu airport, a rebel counteroffensive through Kalehe territory to the north, and skirmishes in the Uvira highlands to the south, tracked on a near-weekly basis by regional security monitors. A ceasefire monitoring mechanism, brokered in Doha with US mediation between Kinshasa and Kigali, produced a formal framework and a national dialogue that opened in Kinshasa in late August 2026, but on-the-ground fighting has not stopped, and the situation remains genuinely fluid in both directions.

What “Do Not Travel” Actually Means for This Park

The US State Department currently rates North and South Kivu provinces, home to Virunga National Park and Kahuzi-Biega National Park, respectively, at Level 4: Do Not Travel, its highest risk category, citing armed conflict, crime, kidnapping, and terrorism, and notes that the US government has extremely limited ability to provide consular assistance to citizens who travel there anyway. The UK Foreign Office and most other Western governments maintain comparably strict advisories for the same area. In practical terms, this situation means standard travel insurance is unlikely to treat a trip to the region as an ordinary, covered claim; international carriers and most reputable tour operators, Rwanda Gorilla Expeditions included, will not currently route travelers through Bukavu; and even on a day when a specific trekking trail inside the park might be locally quiet, reaching it still means transiting a province under an active Level 4 advisory. This is a meaningfully more serious situation than simply saying “check current conditions before you go”; it is closer to saying “this destination is not currently open to ordinary international tourism.”

A Note on Other Sources You’ll Find Online

If you research Kahuzi-Biega elsewhere, you’ll encounter a wide range of characterizations, some describing it as calm and safely managed, and occasionally even actively marketing bookable trips there right now. Some of that content predates the February 2025 capture of Bukavu or simply hasn’t been updated since; some of it is written by operators with a commercial incentive to downplay risk to close a booking. We’d rather lose an inquiry than mislead a traveler on a decision with real safety and financial consequences, so our position is straightforward: as of this writing, we do not recommend planning travel to Kahuzi-Biega National Park, and any operator offering a fixed-date itinerary there right now should be asked, directly and specifically, how they intend to get clients safely to and from Bukavu under current conditions.

How This Compares to Virunga National Park

Some people sometimes confuse Kahuzi-Biega with Virunga National Park, DRC’s better-known gorilla park, which lies roughly 200 kilometers north near Goma in North Kivu. The two parks protect different gorilla subspecies: Grauer’s gorillas at Kahuzi-Biega and mountain gorillas at Virunga. They are located in different provinces, but both gateway cities, Bukavu and Goma, have been under M23/AFC control since 2025, and both provinces have the same Level 4 US advisory. Our Virunga Mountains guide covers the Virunga side of this picture in more depth, including how it relates to Rwanda’s and Uganda’s sectors of the same volcanic massif. Neither Congolese park should currently be treated as a bookable, fixed-date tourism destination.

Gorilla Permits, Costs, and Booking Logistics Under Normal Operating Conditions

The figures below describe how Kahuzi-Biega has historically operated and priced its gorilla permits, useful background for understanding the destination and for comparing it to Rwanda and Uganda, but they should be read as provisional, not bookable, given everything covered above. Treat any of these numbers as with a specialist operator directly before assuming they’re current.

Published permit prices for Kahuzi-Biega vary more than you’d expect from a single park, largely because the fee is set by a different authority than Rwanda’s or Uganda’s national tourism boards and has been reported inconsistently across tour operator websites over the years. Most sources converge on approximately USD 400 per person for a standard gorilla trekking permit, though quoted figures for non-resident foreigners range from roughly USD 250 to USD 500, with some operators pricing an extended gorilla habituation experience separately and higher. This compares to Rwanda’s fixed USD 1,500 permit and Uganda’s USD 800 permit for mountain gorilla trekking, a gap that reflects Kahuzi-Biega’s different cost structure and conservation financing model rather than a lesser experience.

What’s Typically Included

Under normal conditions, the permit fee generally covers park entrance, a ranger guide for the trek, and the one-hour observation period once your group reaches the assigned gorilla family. Porters, available locally for a modest daily fee, typically sit outside the permit price, as do ground transport, accommodation, and the DRC tourist visa, which most operators have historically arranged at or before the Bukavu border for roughly USD 100.

Booking Timing and Group Size, Historically

Group sizes follow the regional standard of a maximum of eight visitors per gorilla family per day, and unlike Rwanda’s oversubscribed permit system, Kahuzi-Biega has not historically required the six-to-twelve-month advance booking window that Volcanoes National Park does; demand, even before the current conflict, was a fraction of Rwanda’s. That is obviously moot while the park is inaccessible, but it’s a useful data point for understanding how differently the two destinations have been positioned in the market.

Getting to Kahuzi-Biega National Park: Routes and Distances

Again, the route is described here for background and for travelers researching the destination broadly, not as a current, bookable route.

Under ordinary conditions, most international travelers reached Kahuzi-Biega by flying into Kigali International Airport in Rwanda, then continuing overland. The most commonly cited road route ran from Kigali to Cyangugu, also called Rusizi, a drive of roughly six to seven hours across Rwanda’s southwest, followed by a border crossing into Bukavu and a further 30-to-45-minute drive to the park’s Tshivanga or Lwiro headquarters. A faster alternative used Kamembe Airport, on the Rwandan side of the same border town, cutting the overland leg to a short domestic flight from Kigali followed by the same border crossing and short onward drive. Some operators have historically also routed travelers via Goma and Lake Kivu, though that path adds a second border crossing and considerably more travel time. Every one of these routes currently depends on the Rwanda-DRC border crossing at Bukavu operating normally and on Bukavu itself being safe to transit, neither of which is true.

Packing and Practical Logistics for Eastern Lowland Gorilla Trekking

If and when Kahuzi-Biega reopens to responsible tourism, the practical preparation for a trek there differs only modestly from mountain gorilla trekking in Rwanda or Uganda, mainly because the elevation is lower and the forest warmer.

• Clothing: long-sleeved shirt and trousers in dark, neutral colors (olive, khaki, and dark green), avoiding bright colors and white, which can disturb the gorillas and show dirt quickly.
• Footwear: waterproof, ankle-supporting trekking boots with a firm tread; the forest floor stays damp even outside the rainy season, and trainers or sandals aren’t adequate.
• Rain protection: a lightweight, packable rain jacket, given the equatorial climate’s tendency toward sudden downpours with little warning.
• Hands and legs: gardening or lightweight work gloves for pushing through dense undergrowth, and gaiters if you have them, since Kahuzi-Biega’s lower-elevation forest can be thicker underfoot than Rwanda’s bamboo zones.
• Layering: Because the highland sector sits at a noticeably lower, warmer elevation than Volcanoes National Park, travelers typically need less cold-weather layering than a Rwanda gorilla trek requires, though mornings can still be cool before the sun clears the canopy.
• Day pack: at least two liters of water, snacks or a packed lunch, insect repellent, sunscreen, and a camera with a moderate zoom lens suited to denser lowland forest light. Flash photography is prohibited around the gorillas, as it is everywhere gorilla trekking takes place.
• Health: a yellow fever vaccination certificate is required for entry into the DRC, and malaria prophylaxis is generally advisable given the park’s lower elevation compared with Rwanda’s volcanic highlands.

Kahuzi-Biega vs Bwindi vs Volcanoes National Park: Comparing Your Options

For a traveler weighing where to trek gorillas in 2027, the honest comparison isn’t really “which park is best” so much as “which of these is actually operating right now.”

Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park and Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest both protect mountain gorillas and both operate normally today, with mature, well-tested tourism infrastructure behind them. Kahuzi-Biega and Virunga National Parks protect a different gorilla subspecies at a genuinely lower historical price point and, under stable conditions, represent a fascinating, less-visited option for travelers who have already trekked mountain gorillas and want to see Grauer’s species specifically. Currently, though, that comparison is largely academic: only Rwanda and Uganda are bookable. If you’re deciding between mountain gorilla destinations, our detailed Rwanda vs. Uganda gorilla trekking comparison breaks down permit cost, terrain, and accessibility in full, and our broader gorilla trekking guide covers all three countries, including an honest assessment of DRC’s current status, in one place.

Why We Currently Recommend Rwanda Instead

We’re a Rwanda-based specialist operator, so it would be easy to dismiss our recommendation as self-serving, but it holds up on its own facts, independent of who’s making it. Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park currently offers 24 habituated mountain gorilla families, the largest number of trekking-accessible gorilla groups anywhere in the world, reached by a two-to-two-and-a-half-hour drive on well-maintained roads from Kigali International Airport, under the stable management of the Rwanda Development Board. Permits are fixed at USD 1,500 per person, the trekking program has run without a security-driven closure for decades, and the surrounding lodge ecosystem, Singita Kwitonda, Wilderness Bisate, One&Only Gorilla’s Nest, and others, represents some of the finest safari accommodation on the continent.

None of that erases what’s genuinely remarkable about Kahuzi-Biega and the Grauer’s gorilla story; it simply reflects where responsible, bookable gorilla trekking actually exists today. If you’re specifically drawn to the eastern lowland gorilla, we’re happy to talk you through what we know honestly and flag the moment conditions on the ground genuinely change, rather than sell you an itinerary we can’t stand behind.

Frequently Asked Questions About Kahuzi-Biega National Park

Plan Your Gorilla Trek With Rwanda Gorilla Expeditions

Kahuzi-Biega National Park remains one of the most remarkable, least-understood wildlife destinations on the planet, and we’ve tried to give you the complete picture here, including the part that most tour listings currently leave out. If gorilla trekking is the goal and you want it to actually happen on the dates you have available, Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park is where we’d start the conversation: fully open, stably managed, and home to the largest number of habituated gorilla families anywhere in the world. Reach out to Rwanda Gorilla Expeditions by WhatsApp or email.

Tell us your dates, and we’ll check permit availability within a few minutes, and we’ll give you a straightforward, honest read on where things currently stand in DR Congo if that’s still part of your thinking.