The Dian Fossey Tomb Hike — Karisoke Research Centre Trail
The Dian Fossey tomb hike is one of the most significant conservation-history walks in Africa — a half-day trek from Volcanoes National Park’s Kinigi Headquarters to the site of the Karisoke Research Centre where Dian Fossey lived, worked, and is buried. At $75 per person (Foreign Non-Resident rate), it is also one of the most accessible additional experiences at the park — a genuine addition to a Rwanda gorilla trekking itinerary rather than a secondary offering.
The Permit and Logistics
The Dian Fossey tomb hike permit costs $75 per person (Foreign Non-Resident). Minimum age is 15 years — the same as gorilla trekking. Groups depart from Kinigi Park Headquarters at 07h00, the same as gorilla trekking groups. The hike can be done on the same day as a gorilla trek (as a combined activity for fit visitors, though this makes for a long day) or on a separate day as the primary activity.
Permits are booked through IREMBO or through a registered tour operator. Availability is generally better than for gorilla permits, and shorter booking lead times are typically sufficient.
The Trail
The trail from Kinigi climbs through the agricultural zone at the park boundary and into the bamboo forest, continuing upward through the transition to hagenia-hypericum forest at higher altitude. The trail to the Karisoke site takes approximately two to three hours depending on pace and conditions. The altitude gain is significant — the Karisoke Research Centre site sits at approximately 3,000 metres — and the terrain is forest trail rather than manicured path.
Waterproof hiking boots and a lightweight rain jacket are appropriate for this hike regardless of the season forecast — weather at 3,000 metres in the Virunga mountains is variable. The same gear recommended for gorilla trekking is appropriate for the Fossey hike.
What You See at Karisoke
The Karisoke Research Centre site itself is no longer the active research station it was during Fossey’s time. The original structures were destroyed during the period of regional instability in the 1990s. What remains is the graveyard — Dian Fossey’s own grave, and alongside it, the graves of several of the gorillas she monitored and named, including Digit, whose poaching death in 1977 became one of the catalysing events in international mountain gorilla conservation awareness.
Digit’s grave is the focal point for most visitors. The emotions that accompany standing at a gorilla’s grave — a named individual whose death contributed to a conservation movement that has since brought the species back from the edge of extinction — are not what most visitors expect to feel at a mountain hiking destination.
Dian Fossey’s Story
Fossey arrived in the Virunga mountains in 1967, encouraged by the paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey, and spent the following 18 years conducting the world’s longest continuous field study of mountain gorillas. Her habituation of the Susa and other gorilla groups provided the first scientific basis for understanding gorilla social structure, communication, and behaviour. Her aggressive anti-poaching stance — controversial in its methods but unambiguous in its motivation — created enemies. She was murdered in her cabin at Karisoke in December 1985. Her killer was never conclusively identified.
She is buried, at her own prior request, in the gorilla graveyard at Karisoke — among the animals she spent her adult life protecting.
Who Should Do the Dian Fossey Hike
The hike is worth doing for: anyone with an interest in conservation history and the people behind the mountain gorilla recovery; visitors who have read Gorillas in the Mist or seen the film; and gorilla trekking visitors who want to add a historically significant second activity to their Volcanoes National Park itinerary. The combination of gorilla trekking on one day and the Fossey hike on a second day is a natural and rewarding two-day structure.
