Gorilla trekking is sold on a single, extraordinary hour spent in the presence of a habituated gorilla family, and that part of the experience genuinely lives up to it. What's less often explained clearly is everything that surrounds that hour: the permit system, the physical demands of the trek itself, and the real difference between doing it in Uganda versus Rwanda.
Permits are limited by design, both to protect the gorillas and to keep group sizes small, which means booking months ahead during peak season is not optional if you want a specific date. Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park tends to have gentler, shorter treks and more polished infrastructure around it; Bwindi in Uganda often means longer, steeper hikes through denser forest, but at a noticeably lower permit cost.
Neither is objectively better, they suit different travelers and different budgets. What matters is going in with realistic expectations about trek length, which can run anywhere from under an hour to several hours depending on where the gorilla family happens to be that morning, and packing for genuinely muddy, humid rainforest conditions.