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Booking terms
Written to be read, not to be argued over. If anything here is unclear, ask before you book — we would rather explain now than disagree later.
1. Who you are booking with
Supreme Gorilla Safaris Limited, registered in Uganda (Reg. No. 80020001720872) and licensed as a tour operator by the Uganda Tourism Board, licenceUTB/RTT/TO/2026/102554. Our office is in Kabale, in the south-west of Uganda.
2. Confirming your trip
- We check gorilla permit availability for your dates first — everything else follows from it.
- We send you an itemised quote: every lodge, park fee and activity, with the permits shown separately.
- You confirm in writing (an email or WhatsApp message is enough).
- You pay a deposit of 30 % of the trip, plus the full cost of any gorilla or chimpanzee permits. Your trip is confirmed when we receive it, and we send you the permit references.
- The balance is due 45 days before you arrive. If you book less than 45 days ahead, the full amount is due when you book.
3. Gorilla and chimpanzee permits
Permits are sold by the Uganda Wildlife Authority, which takes the full fee at the time of booking and does not hold permits against a deposit. That is why we ask for them in full at the start.
Once bought, a permit is not refundable — that is UWA's rule, not ours, and we cannot change it. In some cases UWA allows a permit to be moved to another date; when it does, we will do it for you at no charge. A gorilla permit currently costs USD 800 per person for foreign non-residents, and USD 600 in April, May and November. We charge you exactly what UWA charges us.
4. If you need to cancel
Life happens, and we would rather be fair than rigid. If you cancel, we keep the following share of the trip price — always excluding the permits, which follow UWA's rule above:
| You cancel | We keep |
|---|---|
| 60 days or more before arrival | 10 % |
| 30 to 59 days before | 30 % |
| 15 to 29 days before | 50 % |
| Less than 15 days before | 100 % |
If a lodge refunds us more than this, we pass the difference back to you. We repay by the same route you paid, within 30 days, and we show you the arithmetic.
5. Changing your trip
Tell us in writing. Changing your dates once, more than 60 days before arrival, is free — we only pass on any real extra cost from a lodge or park. Later changes are treated case by case; if a change amounts to a cancellation of part of the trip, section 4 applies to that part.
6. If we have to change something
Roads wash out, parks close sectors, and UWA sometimes moves permits between gorilla families. If we have to change your trip, we tell you as soon as we know, explain why, and offer something of the same standard or better. If we cancel a trip ourselves for any reason within our control, you get everything back, permits included.
If events beyond anyone's control — floods, unrest, an epidemic, a government decision — stop a trip, we will first offer to move it to new dates, and otherwise refund everything we can recover from lodges and parks.
7. Insurance
Travel insurance is a condition of booking. It must cover medical treatment, emergency evacuation and cancellation. Gorilla trekking is strenuous walking at altitude in a remote place; check that your policy names the activity.
8. Health, age and the gorillas
- The minimum age for gorilla trekking is 15; for chimpanzee tracking, 12. Rangers may ask for proof of age.
- Nobody may approach the gorillas with signs of a cold or flu. Gorillas catch human infections and die of them. Whether a permit can then be moved is UWA's decision; we will argue your case.
- A yellow fever certificate is required to enter Uganda.
9. Paying us
By bank transfer to the company's account, in the company's name —never to a personal account, and never to an account named in a message you did not expect. We send our bank details on our invoice only. If anyone asks you to pay elsewhere while claiming to be us, it is not us: message us on our usual number before you pay.
10. If something goes wrong on the trip
Tell Titus straight away, while you are still here and something can be done about it. A problem raised on the third morning can almost always be fixed.