TOURISM

From the balcony of my villa at daybreak, I can see the nearby village creaking to life. Children are walking to school in their blue uniforms, and a farmer slings a hoe into the ground. The Africa of travelers’ imaginations is defined by vast open spaces — the treeless plains, the lonely desert — but Rwanda is the most densely populated country on the continent, and a trip here comes with an awareness that you’re sharing this space.

I sip my coffee in the morning breeze, and my eyes wander out to the mountain dominating the landscape. Mount Bisoke is one of several volcanoes in the Virunga chain, and every room at Bisate Lodge offers a front-row seat to its majesty. Although the peak spends much of the day hiding behind clouds, at this early hour, sunbeams shoot out from behind the crown like a kind of holy light, and I can understand why people from another era might have believed it was magical.

The Virungas are home to more than half the area’s 880 endangered mountain gorillas, the same primates Dian Fossey studied in the 1970s and 1980s. The chance to visit them in their natural rainforest habitat is a bucket-list item that draws visitors from across the globe to these peaks, which straddle the border with Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Gorilla treks can originate in each country, but Rwanda has emerged as the high-end experience. Wilderness Safaris, one of the top ecotourism companies in Africa, opened Bisate Lodge near Volcanoes National Park in June. Faith in the area is so strong that two more premium names, Singita and One & Only Resorts, are opening properties near the park in 2018 and 2019, making Rwanda a new seat of luxury tourism.

Luxury? Rwanda? The 1994 genocide here was one of the most bone-chilling tragedies in modern memory, leaving a million dead and an entire country shaken to its core. In the almost quarter-century since, however, something remarkable has happened. Rwanda has flourished. No more talk of Hutus and Tutsis, the tribal divisions exacerbated by Belgian colonialists, but a newfound unity. There’s mandatory education and universal health care.

The country even legislated gender equality and claims more women in Parliament than any government in the world. Much of this change can be attributed to Paul Kagame, the president who steered Rwanda through a long period of reconciliation to emerge as one of the safest places in Africa.

And so tourism is booming. Up 30 percent in the last two years alone and grossing US$400 million in 2016, the industry has pushed past coffee to become the country’s top foreign exchange earner. In the capital of Kigali, a futuristic new convention center is part of the government’s plan to frame the centrally located city as a major business hub. Marriott International Inc. and Radisson Blu have opened 200-plus-room hotels to accommodate the influx.

Once dismissed by guidebooks as “nothing much to see here,” Kigali has the vibrancy of a bustling 21st century Africa, where women in colorful kitenge dresses carry jugs on their head alongside zooming moto taxis and young people texting. With multiple carriers flying into Kigali International Airport and an easy $30 visa paid upon arrival (a $100 three-pack includes Uganda and Kenya), travel to and around this tiny landlocked country has become easier than ever. The hope is that tourists who come for the gorillas will stay and discover the rest.

The drive to Bisate Lodge is a threehour journey from Kigali along winding mountain passes that overlook an endless patchwork of crop plots: banana groves with leaves like flapping elephant ears; wheat fields rippling into the horizon; potatoes, potatoes, potatoes. Ninety percent of the country’s 12 million inhabitants are subsistence farmers, leaving little of the green and hilly landscape uncultivated.

I’ve arrived in July, during the dry season that runs from June to mid-September. The temperature stays moderate year-round, but Rwanda is a place of fog and shifting winds, and though it’s a sunny 75F (24 degrees Celcius) back in Kigali, the air gets chillier as the road climbs toward my destination. The final 15 minutes of the trip take me and my driver, Duncan, down a bumpy road through a mud-hut village, also called Bisate. Goats nibble on bushes and barefoot children stare at the black SUV as it passes, still struck by the novelty of a stranger coming to their part of the world.

Bisate Lodge was built within eyeshot of the town, and though the proximity turns out to be a profound part of my visit, I feel a stab of self-consciousness. Should I wave? Or try to remain invisible? We talk about travel as “getting away,” but just as crucially it’s an act of entering — a new place, a culture not our own. Those of us lucky enough to set foot on foreign soil would do well to consider the moral complexity of our arrival.

Fortunately, Wilderness Safaris has been doing that for more than three decades. Conceived in 1983 by Colin Bell and Chris McIntyre, two shaggy-haired guides seized by the need to preserve the area wildlife, the company evolved alongside a more sophisticated understanding of global travel. The point isn’t simply to take away but also to give back.

With more than 40 camps and lodges, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, Wilderness has earned a reputation for conserving land and also building up local communities. Five years ago, when the company began looking at this farmland around Volcanoes National Park, its team met with a co-op formed from the village and asked, “What do you want?” The answer from the communities was clear: They wanted jobs and opportunity.

Bisate has given them both. At the northwestern edge of the village, the lodge appears at the end of a short, solitary road, a cluster of chestnut-shaped villas nestled into an eroded volcanic cone. (The word bisate means “pieces” in Kinyarwanda). About 250 locals helped build the property, and 45 Rwandans were hired as permanent staff, almost half from the village.

Designed by the South Africa-based Nicholas Plewman Architects, Bisate draws inspiration from the dramatic dome and thatching of the King’s Palace at Nyanza, the 19th century seat of monarchy in Rwanda’s southern province.