I tried Ugandan food for the 1st time intense gorilla trek

So just a short walk from our lodge we've come down to a community where we've been invited into one of the locals homes to cook Wombo, which is one of the most famous dishes here in Uganda. What did you say the name of this town was? Ushaga. Some of the gorilla trekking actually starts just in the forest right there so Gilbert our guide was just telling me that they've actually had the gorillas come right up into the village before. So we're just in the kitchen, this is an outdoor shed and we got a fire going. We are cleaning up the vegetables for the Wombo, we've got green peppers, carrots, tomatoes and onions. Are you comfortable standing like that? Yes. Yeah? Really? Can you just take this wood from the forest or do you need to buy the wood? In the forest you no longer collect wood from the forest, but we collect it from a planted forest in the community. Ok veggies are stir fried with some oil, a little bit of salt and then add the tomatoes in. So today's Luwombo is with beef. Is Luwombo only with beef or you can make other meat too? Any. Any meat. Even chicken. Yeah? Fish. Secret spice? Yeah. It's not secret. So a couple of spice packets, a little bit of water and then into the veggies. So our beef is sliced up, I saw some meat, some intestines, some tripe and then mixed in with the veg and all the spice. So that's going to cook down now for a little bit, you can see all the smoke billowing out of the kitchen here. And what I will say, besides the gorillas being incredible, the nature and the scenery here is just amazing. You've got the primary rainforest, but even the farmlands going up the side of the hills are beautiful, you get the misty mountains, they call Rwanda the country of a thousand hills and Uganda, well we're right near the border so it's not too much different. I think there's way more than a thousand though. So the meat and veg and spices were all stewed but not cooked completely, they're going to be finished cooking in the banana leaves, so she's just laid out some banana leaves and then filled it with that beautiful mixture of Luwumbo and then wrapped it up in the banana leaves. You can see she's got the hot hot stew with all the juices and the meat and veg and everything wrapping up in the banana leaf, one or two leaves and then some of the kind of hostard fiber of the banana tree that she uses to actually tie it up, it's almost like a tamale when it's done, like a big huge tamale. So this is Ugandan Luwumbo. So after the meat and all the juices and vegetables is wrapped up in the banana leaves, they laid some of the banana stems down at the bottom of the pot and then wrapped it in more and more leaves and then poured in a little bit of water in the perimeter of the pot, so that's going to cook away inside of the banana leaves, that is a really cool preparation, so not only are you going to get the flavor of the beef, the veggies, the spice packets, but also the natural flavor of all that banana leaves that it's cooking in. So to eat with our Luwumbo we're going to be preparing another dish, Matoke, which is the banana. So we've got green bananas, she's lined the pot with the banana stems once again and even though here in Uganda it's normal for the women to be the ones in the kitchen mostly, I'm trying my best at peeling this banana, I've done about one in the time that she's done about five. So those bananas have been cooking away over the wood fire, they've also been covered in the banana leaves similar to the Luwumbo and now she's just kind of compressing it, packing it down and kind of forming it into a single piece which we're going to eat with the Luwumbo, with the meat. Okay, the Matoke and the Luwumbo are finished cooking and as soon as she unwraps that banana leaf and it just lets out that steam, you just get the essence of all the banana leaves, the beef, the vegetables, it smells so good and we're going to be eating it with that kind of mashed green bananas, Matoke. What's beautiful in your language? Obonire. Yeah. Okay, lunch is served, this looks so good and watching the whole process was amazing. Luwumbo is one of Uganda, maybe the most famous dish but definitely one of the most famous dishes in the whole country. So you've got the beef cooked in the banana leaves with some carrots, onions, peppers and then all of that beautiful juice, almost like a soup and then we've got the compressed bananas over here, the Matoke. I'm just going to grab some of this and then dunk it in that sauce and just try it first before I try the meat. Yum. Oh, the bananas are almost like a mashed potato, the texture. They don't have any like sweetness to them because of their green bananas and then all the flavor of that Luwumbo is coming from the banana leaves, it's so fragrant, aromatic, hot though. Okay, let's go for some meat, I'm going to rip off a piece of the beef and they were telling me here, you know, beef is quite expensive so it's only eaten maybe on special occasions, once a month, so it's really an honor to be able to try it for a short visit here. That is impressive, like really good flavor. I've been impressed with everything I've tried so far in East Africa, I find they really do a good job preparing the food, the flavors are great and it just goes so well, even with the banana, all the juice, the meat is soft, veggies, really good, juicy, beautiful flavor. I've never tried either of these dishes but I've never had the mashed bananas like this in Motoke, it's interesting, it works really well actually, it's got a little bit of a fruity flavor but it's almost just like a mashed potato, falls off the bone, the flavor from cooking that banana leaf is unmatched, that is phenomenal. Big chunks of meat in there, this is my first taste of Ugandan food, it does not disappoint. I feel like you can taste every single ingredient she put in there and even though it's like some generic spice packet, there's so much more flavor from those tomatoes, all the vegetables that broke down and then that Motoke soaks up that juice like even better than mashed potatoes. Yeah, okay, I honestly prefer this over mashed potatoes or anything, it's almost the same. So we are in Uganda at Bwindi National Park, also known as Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, so as the name suggests, we may have a very difficult trek ahead of us today. The mountain gorillas are always moving so we're not really sure how long of a hike we're going to have today, could be 8 hours, could be an hour and a half, we will see but the trackers are always watching them so we're guaranteed to see the mountain gorillas. So we woke up bright and early, drove from our lodge across some bumpy dirt roads and beautiful views over the misty mountains and we are heading to the starting point to begin our trek. Okay, we are off, we've reached the starting point to our trek today into Bwindi National Park, so this is one of the few places in the world that you can actually visit wild mountain gorillas, the other being Congo and Rwanda. In Rwanda, it is in Volcanoes National Park, it's about $1500 USD per person. Here in Uganda there is Mugahinga and Bwindi where we are and it's $800 USD per person. It's a little bit pricey but a lot of that money is going towards the conservation and the local community. You can also go in the Congo, it's much cheaper but not recommended as the security situation there is not great. So we are heading out, we are going to be meeting with a family of gorillas that are 14, two silverbacks, they've got some babies and here in Bwindi there's actually almost 50% of the whole population of mountain gorillas in the world, so about 500 of them living in the park. So we've just reached the edge of the community where the forest starts. They plant this tea here because it's sort of like a boundary, both the gorillas but there's also elephants that live in the forest here, they won't eat the tea. So they'll kind of hopefully stop from coming in the community because it's a big challenge for the community here with the animals coming in and destroying the crops. So something that's kind of important I think to understand when you're coming here to do the gorilla trek is you're guaranteed 100% to see the gorillas because the trackers are out there all night watching the movements, it's not like whale watching or something where you don't know what you're going to see if anything. And we're just a group I think of seven and then we've got a guide, a couple porters, and then two guys with machine guns. Not for the gorillas but for the elephants, just to scare them away. Okay we've only been hiking maybe 45 minutes and apparently we've already reached them. Mentally we were prepared for a lot more hiking. So we've got to go mask up because we don't want to spread any diseases to the gorillas and we get to spend one hour with the gorillas, this is going to be amazing. It was one of a kind, such an amazing incredible experience that I think it's one of the best things I did in my life. Oh the baby is so so cute and like the way that I like the shot that the baby was on the mother's back and we're so lucky today right? It doesn't took us a long time at all to see them. So there's one coming and we were like okay let's stay still because she was like walking into our path and she walked right in front of us. That was crazy. So we are back at our lodge now, this is called a Chumbi Gorilla Lodge here on the outskirts of Bwindi. It's really impressive, this lodge is awesome, I am loving it so far. All the design is traditional, we've got this little sort of cottage, ours is called Robin Chat, it's got this nice balcony overlooking the jungle. It's honestly hard to put it into words being face to face with a silverback. I don't think I've ever experienced something quite like that, they're just the most beautiful majestic creatures ever, 98% human and you can see when you're up close to them. They're gentle giants, vegetarians for the most part, like 99% vegetarians. They're very calm, they just kind of roll around in the grass, climb up in the trees. They're pretty chill, like you can get right up next to them and you don't feel nervous. We were a little bit worried but as soon as we were with them, all those worries just went away and we felt totally calm and relaxed with them and the hour just went by really fast. So I hope this video answers any questions that you may have if you're considering doing a gorilla trek. Like I said you can do it in Rwanda, you can do it here in Uganda, you can do it in Congo but I wouldn't recommend it. If you have any other questions about gorilla trekking or anything, leave a comment down below and I'll see you guys on the next episode of Chopsticks Travel, bye.