We'd been plodding through the northern Congolese rainforest for almost two hours when I started to suspect that our guide had lost the plot. Gabin Okele, standing little more than five feet tall in his patched-up rubber boots, madly hacked his machete through the thicket, snipping away snarls of arrowroot and knotty lianas with a pair of garden scissors ("Salad surfing," he called it). We passed through streams and scrambled over logs mushy from the tropical rot, past trees stripped of their bark by the jungle-dwelling forest elephants whose footprints pockmarked the muddy trail.
The forest had swallowed us, but we weren't alone. Mere meters away, from behind an impenetrable wall of green, the sound of cracking twigs and guttural grunts filled the silence. Wafts of dung and bestial testosterone – a smell not dissimilar to sweaty workout gear – laced the gelatinous air, a surefire sign of the troupe of western lowland gorillas we had come to find. Okele, though, bushwhacked on.
Now and then, he would vanish between the vines, only to reappear with a knowing smirk. More snipping, more slashing. Until suddenly, he gestured for us to halt. On a fallen tree in a jungle clearing, where the morning sun leaked through the lacy canopy like molten gold, we found a lone blackback out for a stroll. For a split second, we were mutually startled, until the beast mock-charged at us, drummed his chest, and rushed back into the thicket as swiftly as he had appeared. Okele, who knows the forest like his back pocket and considers this gorilla family as close as his own, had predicted the course of the troupe’s morning jaunt all along, and explained how they gathered here to dig for tubers in the clayey soil. We sat in suspended silence, squatted on a carpet of decaying leaves, as we watched seven more apes and a chest-clinging youngling emerge from the jungle’s quivering undergrowth.
I could feel goosebumps running down my spine. Not just because I was locking eyes with these strangely human and critically endangered creatures, but also because their wild perch deep inside northern Congo’s Odzala-Kokoua National Park felt as untethered from modern civilisation as I’d ever been.
It was a similar sense of awe that anchored German philanthropist Sabine Plattner to this tenebrous salad bowl roughly the size of Belgium. As a child of the Black Forest, her attachment to the wild is deeply rooted. She first came to Congo in 2007 as part of a reconnaissance tour that also brought her to Malawi, Zambia, Botswana and Rwanda to scope out ways to put her family fortune to use in the conservation of the ecosystems and communities of Sub-Saharan Africa. Back then, reaching the park still took days of navigating potholed roads from the capital of Brazzaville (now, thankfully, it’s a short flight).
In Mbomo, a small village on the park’s perimeter, she boarded a pirogue and floated down the Lekoli River, past whisper-quiet forest elephants and crocodiles hiding in the tangles of green. Gripped by the wild beauty of this rainforest sprawl, part of the Congo Basin that’s only second to the Amazon in size, she turned around and said: “I’ll do whatever it takes to help protect it.” Almost two decades later, that promise had turned into Kamba African Rainforest Experiences, a string of plush jungle lodges blending ecotourism with research and community engagement, managed by her daughter, Tina Plattner.
Our first base camp was Ngaga Lodge, a cluster of raffia-roofed bungalows perched high on stilts in the heart of the jungle. Designed to merge seamlessly with its surroundings, the camp exuded an air of simple luxury, a place where mosquito nets billowed in the breeze of whirring fans and lanterns cast golden pools of light onto the jungle floor. It was impossible to ignore the sounds of nature here: the high-pitched whines of unseen insects, tree hyraxes screaming like demonic toddlers, and, if you listened carefully, the occasional deep-throated grunt of something far bigger looming in the dark distance. But Ngaga isn’t just a jungle lodge, it’s a nerve centre for Congo’s primate research, a place where the lines between tourism and conservation blurred into a single, symbiotic existence.
At the helm of that research is Magda Bermejo, a Spanish primatologist with jam-jar spectacles, whose name carries weight in the world of great ape conservation. If Jane Goodall was the matriarch of chimpanzees, Bermejo is the guardian of the western lowland gorillas. For decades, she has tracked and studied these elusive primates, slowly earning their trust and unravelling their secretive lives. Her work has paved the way for the very experience we’d had that morning, observing a habituated troupe on their natural turf, watching them forage, play, and interact in ways that felt disarmingly human. Over dinner, she spoke of the challenges: the ever-present threat of poaching and deforestation, the delicate balance between habituation and human interference, the heartbreak of losing a gorilla to illness or injury. But her words carried hope, too, a belief that through research, education, and carefully managed ecotourism, these forests and their inhabitants could endure.
Tina Plattner echoed this sentiment when we spoke about the people who called these forests home. "We want the community to be proud of their area, to use it for more than just a source of food," she told me. She explained how the outdated colonial model of removing people from protected reserves had proven ineffective. Instead, true conservation meant making them part of the process. "They’re the guardians of the forest," she said. "They know it like their back pocket. They find their way around here like I can’t even find my way around my handbag." That philosophy is at the core of Kamba’s mission, ensuring that their projects provide sustainable jobs as an alternative to hunting and logging.
The following day, we traded the dense undergrowth for open water, slipping into kayaks for a slow, meandering paddle down the Lekoli River. It swirled like a chocolate-coloured ribbon, smooth as oil where the current was slack, rippling with hidden life where submerged logs or unseen creatures broke the surface. Paddling felt effortless, the silence punctuated only by the dip of the oar and the occasional splash of a fish leaping out of the shallows. Along the banks, we caught glimpses of colobus monkeys moving ghostlike through the trees, their presence betrayed only by the rustle of leaves. A pair of palm-nut vultures wheeled overhead, scanning for a furry snack, while a slender-snouted crocodile, its mossy back barely distinguishable from the log it was resting on, slid noiselessly into the water.
My lingering sense of insignificance deepened upon arrival at Lango Lodge, where the forest opened into a vast, marshy clearing known as a bai, a mineral-rich watering hole drawing wildlife from miles around. One early morning, we waded waist-deep through a lukewarm swamp nearby, the tannins from fallen leaves staining the water a deep cola hue. The air was thick with humidity, and each step sent ripples through the mirrored surface. It was slow-going, the muck gripping our legs like a living creature, but the reward was worth it: we were, quite literally, following in the footsteps of hippos and forest elephants, whose commutes have carved out these muddy pathways over thousands of years. To my relief, we only spotted them when we were back on solid ground: a tusker, quietly mining for minerals on a grassy patch ahead of us, while his family hid in the jungle fringe.
Sitting there, crouched between the tall grasses and observing this majestic beast with no jeeps or click-click-clicking of tele-lenses around, the Africa of Blixen-esque camps and khaki-clad rangers couldn’t feel farther away. This was something rawer, a place where nature still dictates the rhythm of life, and where conservation isn’t just an abstract idea, but a necessity. I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude. For the forest. For the people fighting to protect it. And for the chance to bear witness to something so utterly, breathtakingly wild.
Where to stay
Ngaga Lodge
Ngaga Lodge's perch, in a tangled patch of rainforest just outside the Odzala-Kokoua National Park’s official boundaries, puts it on the doorstep of three different gorilla families and a short drive away from the area's largest village. Each of the camp's six turtle shell-shaped bungalows is a fan-cooled fantasy of raffia palm fronds and okala wood, with beds draped in gauzy mosquito nets and bathrooms clad in hand-hammered copper. From a breezy viewing deck overlooking the forest canopy, the lounge and dining room serve up après-trek drinks and French-Congolese dinners that could include everything from beef tartare to saka-saka stew from thinly cut cassava leaves.
Lango Lodge
Like Kamba's other camps, the raffia thatch-covered bungalows at Lango Lodge lack TVs and are out of reach from the spotty WiFi (which is only available near the office area). But with wide-screen views over swampy Lango Bai unfurling from the foot of each bed, these mod-cons are hardly missed. Lango Lodge is a basecamp for bai walks and kayak tours down the Lekoli River, where forest elephants and buffalo wade through mineral-rich waters and flocks of African grey pigeons take flight at dawn. The raised walkway to the main lodge makes for prime wildlife spotting before sundowner cocktails with your toes in the water.
Mboko Lodge
More a rest stop than a high-octane rainforest immersion, Mboko Lodge is set on an open savanna dotted with termite mounds that look like Buddhist temples. The riverfront cabins, with canvas walls and furnishing from kaleidoscopic African textiles, open to private decks from where you can spot grazing forest buffalos and red river hogs emerging from the jungle. From here, boat safaris wind through thick riverine forests, while twilight game drives offer glimpses of shy hyenas and the occasional forest elephant. By night, the crackling fire pit becomes a gathering spot to swap stories over plates of grilled fish and plantain mash.
How to do it
Natural World Safaris offers a nine-day Odzala Discovery itinerary with Kamba African Rainforest Experiences, with one night in Brazzaville, three nights’ accommodation in Ngaga Lodge, two nights in Lango Lodge and two nights in Mboko Lodge from around £12,670 per person sharing naturalworldsafaris.com