Tanzania · East Africa
The southern and western circuits.
Nyerere, Ruaha, Katavi and Mahale are Tanzania's wild end — far larger, far emptier, and considerably harder to reach.
Photo Justin Lane / Unsplash
Nyerere (formerly the Selous) offers boating safaris as well as driving, which is rare in East Africa. Ruaha is vast and predator-rich. Mahale, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, is one of the two places in the world to track wild chimpanzees on a mountain that falls straight into a freshwater sea.
These are second-trip destinations for most travellers, and they reward the extra flying they demand.
What is here
Elsewhere in Tanzania
- The SerengetiThe Serengeti is the ecosystem the wildebeest migration moves through, and it is large enough that where you stay decides what you see.
- Ngorongoro and the crater highlandsThe Ngorongoro Crater is a collapsed caldera holding a resident population of game year-round, including some of the last black rhino in the north.
- Tarangire and Lake ManyaraTarangire is baobab and elephant country and the northern circuit's most underrated park; Lake Manyara is a short, scenic stop beneath the Rift escarpment.
- Zanzibar and the coastZanzibar is the standard finish to a Tanzanian safari — a Swahili archipelago with a World Heritage capital and a long history of its own.
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