Chasing gorillas in one of Africa’s most beautiful and untouched landscapes

I lay face down with my head cocooned in the tiny hole that spa beds have to prevent suffocation, as Janviere attempted to knead the tension out of my aching limbs. It was a tough job. My morning had been spent throwing myself over fallen tree trunks, slipping up steep, muddy trails cut by machetes and being routinely attacked by stinging nettles. 

Scrabbling through the dense undergrowth of Mount Karisimbi, in the far west of Rwanda’s Virunga Massif, at an altitude of more than 9,000ft had left its mark – and not only on my scratched skin and cramping muscles.

A deep tissue massage usually sends me to the edge of sleep. But the remarkable faces and characters of the mountain gorillas I’d met earlier that day kept me alert as they paraded before me. It was as if my brain was working separately to my consciousness, trying to come to terms with what my eyes had seen, to process…