Until a few weeks ago, a select group had been allowed to visit a family of fellow primates rarely encountered by mere humans -- the mountain gorillas of East Africa.

It is perhaps the most sublime experience one can have with wildlife in Africa, maybe in the world. But it is no longer available. The gorillas of the mist have become the gorillas of the war zone.

Since eight tourists were killed in an attack in Uganda on March 1, the last of the routes to visit these gorillas has closed. But while those Western tourists represent a tiny fraction of the thousands of Africans who have died in this tumultuous region on the borders of Uganda, Rwanda and Congo, by most accounts the gorillas are surviving relatively unscathed.

"We have had a few reports of gorilla deaths, of poaching," says Craig Sholley, who conducted the last comprehensive census of the gorilla population in Rwanda, counting 420 in 1990. "But there has been nothing systematic.

"I think all of the sides in this conflict recognize that the gorillas are the most valuable asset of the region, and whoever ends up controlling it will need them," says Sholley. He ran the Mountain Gorilla Program in Rwanda in the late 1980s and now works for an Alabama-based travel group, International Expeditions.

The gorillas live in two parts of this area -- the Virunga chain of volcanic mountains in Rwanda and Congo, and the Bwinde Impenetrable Forest of Uganda, where the population is around 320.

The region has been unstable since April 1994, when the country's majority Hutu population, in a well-organized genocidal fury, killed about 700,000 of the minority Tutsi, the country's traditional ruling class.

That spurred a Tutsi-led revolutionary army to press its war in Rwanda. As it swept through the country in July 1994, perhaps a million Hutus fled across the border into Zaire, as Congo was then called. Many found their way through the bamboo forest that is home to Rwanda's gorillas, the ones studied and protected by Dian Fossey with a near-maniacal fervor that was chronicled in the 1988 movie "Gorillas in the Mist."

In Zaire, the refugee camps were next to the forested mountains that held that country's mountain gorilla population.

With these once off-limits areas violated, and with a million refugees headed into the volcanic forests in search of firewood and food, there were fears that the few hundred mountain gorillas remaining would soon be dead.

Though there were reports of large populations of hippopotamus slaughtered by the refugees and sold for their meat, the gorillas survived. As a new government took control in Rwanda, its gorilla tourism program resumed.

Two years later, in November 1996, the bulk of the refugees returned to Rwanda, a human tide walking along the road that leads from the Zaire border town of Goma eastward toward Kigali, Rwanda's capital. Hundreds of thousands passed through Ruhengeri, the town that serves as the gateway to the gorillas.

A few days later, with the detritus of the refugee march still littering the roadway, the gorilla visits were on again. A ticket for one hour with the gorillas cost $126.

Rain was intermittently pouring on this day. The trail up the mountain, through farmland and then into the bamboo, would occasionally disappear into muck. At the edge of the park our group of eight tourists -- five Danes who had driven from Uganda and three journalists who had been covering the refugees' return -- was met by the Rwandan park rangers. They monitor the gorillas, and by most accounts try to keep track of them despite the turmoil in the area. They led us a short way into the woods, then stopped and went over the rules -- no flashes on cameras, stay behind the rangers, follow their commands.

Only a few feet away, down a deeply shaded path, a 400-pound male gorilla, the streak of silver-colored fur on his back clearly visible, munched on bamboo. We were transfixed. A few minutes later, we followed the silverback to a small clearing. We were joined by the rest of the family group and spent the rest of our time huddled together there, surrounded by 10 gorillas, from huge silverbacks to tiny infants, many only a few feet -- sometimes literally inches -- away.

Most ate contentedly. Occasionally, the alpha male would rise up to his 7-foot height and beat his chest, then scamper through the clearing, scattering females into the bamboo. The No. 2 male sat at the end of the clearing, regarding the scene with seemingly philosophical detachment. After an hour, we were reluctant to leave.

"There is no other wild animal that is so tolerant, that will allow people the opportunity to witness what its life is all about in this way, one-on-one in such close proximity," says Sholley, who lives in Howard County.

It was hoped that the return of the Hutu refugees would bring stability, but the opposite happened. The Interhamwe militia that had orchestrated the 1994 genocide reformed. The area around the gorillas' habitat became their staging area.

After attacks on villages, the Rwanda government moved most of the people in the Ruhengeri area into camps, in part to protect them, in part to deny the Interhamwe conscripts. Within a few months of our trip, the gorilla visits were suspended. By all accounts, it was an Interhamwe group responsible for the tourist attack in Uganda, ending visits from there as well.

Michael Cranfield, head veterinarian at the Baltimore Zoo, last year was named director of the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project that looks after the Rwanda population. He has visited Rwanda twice, but has yet to see those gorillas, though he did help one caught in a snare in the small part of the Virunga range that extends into Uganda.

"We get reports from people in Ruhengeri, but it is too dangerous to go there," Cranfield says of his work in Kigali. "From what we hear, some rangers do try to keep up with the gorillas, but not on a regular basis. There is no tourism."

Rwanda was considered the Sistine Chapel of gorilla visits. Its population was the most habituated to people. The bamboo forest, while thick, provided ample areas for close contact. Visits in the Congo were intermittent and ill-organized, and are nonexistent in its current turmoil. The thick forest and more skittish population in Uganda made close encounters more difficult to come by.

People were still willing to pay for the experience -- tickets for an hour with Uganda's gorillas were to cost $280 next year, an important source of hard currency for a struggling country. The gorillas attract tourists who leave money in hotels, restaurants, taxis and other parks around the country.

Cranfield still works to see that the gorillas remain healthy, examining feces and urine recovered from the field for parasites.

"Our main concern is what tourists might bring in," Cranfield says. "You have people getting off the plane from all over the world and going straight into the forest to the gorillas. There is no telling what kinds of endemic diseases they are carrying."