Mt. Kilimanjaro National Park

Kilimanjaro is one of the highest walkable summits on the planet and most reasonably fit and properly guided climbers can reach the crater rim with little more than a walking stick, warm clothing and determination. A journey up slopes takes visitors on a climatic world tour, from the tropics to the arctic, passing elephant, leopard, buffalo and antelope along the way.

About Kilimanjaro National Park

Size: 755 sq km (292 sq miles).
Location: Northern Tanzania, near the town of Moshi.

Getting there

128 km (80 miles) from Arusha.
About one hour’s drive from Kilimanjaro airport.

What to do

Six usual trekking routes to the summit and other more-demanding mountaineering routes.
Day or overnight hikes on the Shira plateau. Nature trails on the lower reaches.
Trout fishing.
Visit the beautiful Chala crater lake on the mountain’s southeastern slopes.

When to go

Clearest and warmest conditions from December to February, but also dry (and colder) from July-September.

Accommodation

Huts and campsites on the mountain.
Several hotels and campsites outside the park in the village of Marangu and town of Moshi.

Mikumi National Park

Mikumi is one of the most popular in Tanzania’s national parks, and is easily accessible from Dar es Salaam. Mikumi’s road network provides visitors with easy game viewing drives, and hippo, zebra, giraffe, hartebeest and wildebeest are in abundance. Lion, buffalo and elephants can be seen, along with a huge variety of bird life.

About Mikumi National Park

Size: 3,230 sq km (1,250 sq miles), the fourth-largest park in Tanzania, and part of a much larger ecosystem centred on the uniquely vast Selous Game Reserve.
Location: 283 km (175 miles) west of Dar es Salaam, north of Selous, and en route to Ruaha, Udzungwa and (for the intrepid) Katavi.

How to get there

A good surfaced road connects Mikumi to Dar es Salaam via Morogoro, a roughly 4 hour drive.
Also road connections to Udzungwa, Ruaha and (dry season only) Selous.
Charter flight from Dar es Salaam, Arusha or Selous. Local buses run from Dar to park HQ where game drives can be arranged.

What to do

Game drives and guided walks. Visit nearby Udzungwa or travel on to Selous or Ruaha.

When to go

Accessible year round.

Accommodation

Two lodges, two luxury tented camps, three campsites.
Guest houses in Mikumi town on the park border.

Ngorongoro Conservation

Area: The Ngorongoro conservation area boasts the finest blend of landscape, wildlife, people and archaeological sites in Africa. Traditional African pasturalists co-operate with Tanzania’s government bodies to help preserve the natural resources of the area and ensure a fantastic experience for visitors.

Ngorongoro crater is a huge collapsed volcano and its spectacular setting and abundance wildlife combined to make it one of the wonders of the natural world. The crater alone has over 20,000 large animals including some of Tanzania’s last remaining black rhino.

How to get there

A good surfaced road and charter flights are an option.

What to do

Game drives and guided walks.

When to go

Accessible year round.

Accommodation

Several lodges, luxury hotels and tented camps to choose from.

Ruaha National Park

The game viewing starts the moment the plane touches down. A giraffe races beside the airstrip, all legs and neck, yet oddly elegant in its awkwardness. A line of zebras parades across the runway in the giraffe's wake.In the distance, beneath a bulbous baobab tree, a few representatives of Ruaha's 10,000 elephants - the largest population of any East African national park, form a protective huddle around their young.

Second only to Katavi in its aura of untrammelled wilderness, but far more accessible, Ruaha protects a vast tract of the rugged, semi-arid bush country that characterises central Tanzania. Its lifeblood is the Great Ruaha River, which courses along the eastern boundary in a flooded torrent during the height of the rains, but dwindling thereafter to a scattering of precious pools surrounded by a blinding sweep of sand and rock.

A fine network of game-viewing roads follows the Great Ruaha and its seasonal tributaries, where , during the dry season, impala, waterbuck and other antelopes risk their life for a sip of life-sustaining water. And the risk is considerable: not only from the prides of 20-plus lion that lord over the savannah, but also from the cheetahs that stalk the open grassland and the leopards that lurk in tangled riverine thickets. This impressive array of large predators is boosted by both striped and spotted hyena, as well as several conspicuous packs of the highly endangered African wild dog.

Ruaha's unusually high diversity of antelope is a function of its location, which is transitional to the acacia savannah of East Africa and the miombo woodland belt of Southern Africa. Grant's gazelle and lesser kudu occur here at the very south of their range, alongside the miombo-associated sable and roan antelope, and one of East AfricaÆs largest populations of greater kudu, the park emblem, distinguished by the male's magnificent corkscrew horns.

A similar duality is noted in the checklist of 450 birds: the likes of crested barbet, an attractive yellow-and-black bird whose persistent trilling is a characteristic sound of the southern bush, occur in Ruaha alongside central Tanzanian endemics such as the yellow-collared lovebird and ashy starling.

About Ruaha National Park

Size: 10,300 sq km (3,980 sq miles), Tanzania's 2nd biggest park.
Location: Central Tanzania, 128km (80 miles) west of Iringa.

Getting there

Scheduled and/or charter flights from Dar es Salaam, Selous, Serengeti, Arusha, Iringa and Mbeya.
Year-round road access through Iringa from Dar es Salaam (about 10 hours) via Mikumi or from Arusha via Dodoma.

What to do

Day walks or hiking safaris through untouched bush.
Stone age ruins at Isimila, near Iringa, 120 km (75 miles) away, one of Africa's most important historical sites .

Best time

For predators and large mammals, dry season (mid-May-December);
bird-watching, lush scenery and wildflowers, wet season (January-April).
The male greater kudu is most visible in June, the breeding season.

Accommodation

Riverside lodge
three dry season tented camps;
self-catering bandas, two campsite

Rubondo Island National Park

Rubondo Island National Park, which includes nine smaller islands, is tucked into a corner of Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest Lake. A water wonderland tempting fishers from around the world, the area is also a birder’s paradise. A number of indigenous mammal species can be spotted – hippo, bushbuck, genet, mongoose, and most notably the amphibious Sitatunga antelope, along with introduced species like chimpanzee, elephant and giraffe.

About Rubondo Island National Park

Size: 240 sq km (93 sq miles).
Location: Northwest Tanzania, 150 km (95 miles) west of Mwanza.

Getting there

Scheduled flights from Arusha, Lake Manyara, Serengeti and Mwanza in peak season, charter flights only in low season.
By road from Mwanza and then boat transfer. Contact the Park for transport details.

What to do

Walking safaris, boat excursions, sport fishing, chimpanzee treks, plans for canoe trips.

When to go

Dry season, June-August. Wildflowers and butterflies
Wet season November-March. December- February best for migratory birds.

Accommodation

One luxury tented camp, park bandas and campsite.

Saadani National Park

Palm trees sway in a cooling oceanic breeze. White sand and blue water sparkle alluringly beneath the tropical sun. Traditional dhows sail slowly past, propelled by billowing white sails, while Swahili fishermen cast their nets below a brilliant red sunrise.

Saadani is where the beach meets the bush. The only wildlife sanctuary in East Africa to boast an Indian Ocean beachfront, it possesses all the attributes that make Tanzania’s tropical coastline and islands so popular with European sun-worshippers. Yet it is also the one place where those idle hours of sunbathing might be interrupted by an elephant strolling past, or a lion coming to drink at the nearby waterhole!

Protected as a game reserve since the 1960s, in 2002 it was expanded to cover twice its former area. The reserve suffered greatly from poaching prior to the late 1990s, but recent years have seen a marked turnaround, due to a concerted clampdown on poachers, based on integrating adjacent villages into the conservation drive.

Today, a surprisingly wide range of grazers and primates is seen on game drives and walks, among them giraffe, buffalo, warthog, common waterbuck, reedbuck, hartebeest, wildebeest, red duiker, greater kudu, eland, sable antelope, yellow baboon and vervet monkey.

Herds of up to 30 elephants are encountered with increasing frequency, and several lion prides are resident, together with leopard, spotted hyena and black-backed jackal. Boat trips on the mangrove-lined Wami River come with a high chance of sighting hippos, crocodiles and a selection of marine and riverine birds, including the mangrove kingfisher and lesser flamingo, while the beaches form one of the last major green turtle breeding sites on mainland Tanzania.

About Saadani National Park

Size: 1,100 sq km (430 sq miles)
Location: On the north coast, roughly 100km (60 miles) northwest of Dar es Salaam as the crow flies, and a similar distance southwest of the port of Tanga.

How to get there

Charter flight from Zanzibar or Dar es Salaamwith possibility of scheduled flights in the future.
Thrice-weekly road shuttle from Dar es Salaam, taking four hours in either direction.
No road access from Dar es Salaam along the coast – follow the surfaced Moshi road for 160km (100 miles), then 60km (36 miles) on dirt.
Road access from Tanga and Pangani except after heavy rain. 4x4 required.

What to do

Game drives and guided walks.
Boat trips  & Swimming.
Visit Saadani fishing village, which lies within the reserve, where a collection of ruins pays testament to its 19th century heyday as a major trading port.

When to go

Generally accessible all-year round, but the access roads are sometimes impassable during April and May.
The best game-viewing is in January and February and from June to August.

Accommodation

One luxury tented camp.
Campsites planned.

Serengeti National Park

Tanzania’s first and most famous park, the Serengeti, is renowned for its abundance of leopard and lion. With wide-open plains and huge herds of wildebeests, spectacularly seen during the annual migration, the Serengeti is considered an African Eden and the eighth wonder of the natural world.

About Serengeti

Size: 14,763 sq km (5,700 sq miles).
Location: 335km (208 miles) from Arusha, stretching north to Kenya and bordering Lake Victoria to the west.

Getting there

Scheduled and charter flights from Arusha, Lake Manyara and Mwanza.
Drive from Arusha, Lake Manyara, Tarangire or Ngorongoro Crater.

What to do

Hot air balloon safaris, Maasai rock paintings and musical rocks.
Visit neighbouring Ngorongoro Crater, Olduvai Gorge, Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano and Lake Natron's flamingos.

When to go

To follow the wildebeest migration, December-July. To see predators, June-October

Accommodation

Four lodges, four luxury tented camps and camp sites scattered through the park;
one luxury camp, a lodge and two tented camps just outside.

Tarangire National Park

Day after day of cloudless skies.
The fierce sun sucks the moisture from the landscape, baking the earth a dusty red, the withered grass as brittle as straw. The Tarangire River has shrivelled to a shadow of its wet season self. But it is choked with wildlife. Thirsty nomads have wandered hundreds of parched kilometres knowing that here, always, there is water.

Herds of up to 300 elephants scratch the dry river bed for underground streams, while migratory wildebeest, zebra, buffalo, impala, gazelle, hartebeest and eland crowd the shrinking lagoons. It's the greatest concentration of wildlife outside the Serengeti ecosystem - a smorgasbord for predators – and the one place in Tanzania where dry-country antelope such as the stately fringe-eared oryx and peculiar long-necked gerenuk are regularly observed.

During the rainy season, the seasonal visitors scatter over a 20,000 sq km (12,500 sq miles) range until they exhaust the green plains and the river calls once more. But Tarangire's mobs of elephant are easily encountered, wet or dry.
The swamps, tinged green year round, are the focus for 550 bird varieties, the most breeding species in one habitat anywhere in the world.

On drier ground you find the Kori bustard, the heaviest flying bird; the stocking-thighed ostrich, the world's largest bird; and small parties of ground hornbills blustering like turkeys. More ardent bird-lovers might keep an eye open for screeching flocks of the dazzlingly colourful yellow-collared lovebird, and the somewhat drabber rufous-tailed weaver and ashy starling – all endemic to the dry savannah of north-central Tanzania.

Disused termite mounds are often frequented by colonies of the endearing dwarf mongoose, and pairs of red-and-yellow barbet, which draw attention to themselves by their loud, clockwork-like duetting.
Tarangire's pythons climb trees, as do its lions and leopards, lounging in the branches where the fruit of the sausage tree disguises the twitch of a tail.

About Tarangire National Park

Size: 2,600 sq km (1,005 sq miles).
Location: 118 km (75 miles) southwest of Arusha.

Getting there

Easy drive from Arusha or Lake Manyara following a surfaced road to within 7km (four miles) of the main entrance gate; can continue on to Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti.
Charter flights from Arusha and the Serengeti.

What to do

Guided walking safaris.
Day trips to Maasai and Barabaig villages, as well as to the hundreds of ancient rock paintings in the vicinity of Kolo on the Dodoma Road.

When to go

Year round but dry season (June - September) for sheer numbers of animals.

Accommodation

One lodge, one tented lodge, one luxury tented camp inside the park, another half-dozen exclusive lodges and tented camps immediately outside its borders.
Camp sites in and around the park.

Udzangwa Mountains National Park

A link in the chain of Africa’s eastern are Mountains, Udzangwa is a perfect place for hiking and climbing, with trails leading through rainforests and along escapements. It’s also Tanzania’s richest forest bird habitat and among the three most important bird conservation areas on the continent. Its centrepiece is the Sanje River, which reinvents itself as a spectacular waterfall, plunging 170 m through the forest on the land in the mists of the valley below.

About Udzungwa Mountains National Park

Size: 1,990 sq km (770 sq miles).
Location: Five hours (350 km/215 miles) from Dar es Salaam; 65 kms (40 miles) southwest of Mikumi.

Getting there

Drive from Dar es Salaam or Mikumi National Park.

What to do

From a two-hour hike to the waterfall to camping safaris.
Combine with nearby Mikumi or en route to Ruaha.

When to go

Possible year round although slippery in the rains.
The dry season is June-October before the short rains but be prepared for rain anytime.

Accommodation

Camping inside the park.
Bring all food and supplies.
Two modest but comfortable lodges with en-suite rooms within 1km of the park entrance.