Safari is a Swahili word meaning “journey,” but it has also become synonymous with bloated itineraries, contrived searches for the Big Five, and crowds jostling for camera positions. Tanzania’s Serengeti region has become so congested with tourists that the Great Migration has come to be known locally as the Great Land Cruiser Migration. In its purest concept, the African safari is a non-invasive procedure: you enter the landscape as a shimmering figure, appearing for a moment, departing the next, leaving nothing behind. It’s possible to have such a back-to-basics safari; you just need to know where to go.
In central and western Tanzania, three national parks—Ruaha, Katavi, and Mahale—provide the kind of quiet isolation that safari once implied: tented camps, bonfires, sleeping under the stars, incredibly low tourist numbers, and the faintest whiff of danger that follows with proximity to animals unfamiliar to human contact. Of course, those elements don’t run in contravention of comfort. Jacada Travel, which arranges bespoke luxury visits to the country, hand selects specific lodges in each park that provide the highest level of service, amenities, and experiences. But having a soft mattress doesn’t mean you have to be a softie.
Ruaha National Park, a three-hour flight inland from Dar es Salaam, occupies some twenty thousand square kilometers of central Tanzania. Comparable in size to South Africa’s Kruger National Park, Ruaha sees only one percent of Kruger’s visitors. Conversely, the park contains ten percent of Africa’s lion population and is an essential region for anyone wishing to see large carnivores, as the larger Ruaha ecosystem also holds large numbers of leopards, cheetah, and African wild dogs.
Ruaha’s best accommodation is the Kigelia Camp, which sits on the banks of the Ifuguru River. The camp is simplicity defined, run completely on solar power, and with only a simple open tent with a bar and a few couches for the communal lodge. Individual tents are provided with two beds: a large, downy one inside, and a “sky bed,” elevated on a platform and exposed to the sky. Evenings in camp are perfect for those “Out of Africa” moments, sitting on a cream safari chair, writing letters or looking at the stars, the only light a solar “kerosene” lamp.
Further west, Katavi National Park receives as many guests in a year as the Serengeti receives in a day (approximately 6,000). Only 1,500 of those spend a night in the park, and of those, 50 percent choose to stay at Chada Camp, where an arc of large canvas tents stands in a secluded copse of trees. The camp overlooks the Chada floodplain, a flat expanse of water that ebbs and flows with the seasons. But as a constant source of water, it draws animals from across Katavi year-round. Giraffes, hippo, waterbuck, and impala wander through camp on route to the water, passing neatly in front of one’s tent.
Guests at Chada camp also have the option of spending nights even deeper in the bush. On request, a “fly” camp will be set up somewhere on the savannah—simple tents abutting a bonfire, a bush-toilet constructed behind a canvas hide (hot water is prepared in a flash), meals served on a white-linen covered table, and a mobile drinks cabinet. Without the security of the large tent lodge, the feeling of exposure is palpable. But a cadre of guides and staff are always at hand to keep animals at bay. The benefits, of course, are tantamount: the unbroken Milky Way slicing the sky overhead, the night breeze coming through the mosquito netting,
Mahale Mountains National Park is perhaps the most remote of all, being completely inaccessible by road. Even by chartered flight, this western part of the country is three hours from Arusha, or seven hours from Dar es Salaam, over a ruddy, dry landscape that is relieved only when the green swollen lumps of the Mahale Mountains come into view. And then from the airstrip near Katumbi village, it is still an hour’s boat ride south to the beach clearing where the lodge and rooms of Greystoke Mahale, with their shaggy-thatched roofs, stand against the tangled forest.
The Mahale Mountains lie approximately 100 miles south of Gombe National Park, made famous by Jane Goodall, who, from 1960, made thirty years of chimp observations there. Mahale, too, has chimpanzees—about 700 of the Eastern subspecies live in the mountains—as well as leopards, baboons, duiker, hippos, and crocodiles (the latter make it impossible to swim on the lakeshore), but it is for a glimpse at the apes that most visitors come. Early each morning, trackers from the lodge climb into the hills in search of the group, listening for their hoots, and hacking through the undergrowth with machetes to clear a path for visitors. The intimacy of these great apes is palpable. A few meagre feet away, mothers swaddle their pink, plate-faced babies; teenagers swing on branches and suck the pith out of wild lemons; great, broad-shouldered males walk with a knuckled swagger. The number of people able to visit the chimpanzees is kept to a minimum, ensuring a level of privacy and attention that applies equally to the Greystoke camp.
Greystoke Mahale is an easy place to be when not on a chimp-finding hike. Guests lounge about like castaways on a paradise island, nibbling delicacies, sipping fine wines, reading, sunbathing, playing volleyball on the beach, watching the baboons attempting to infiltrate the main lodge and make off with a cookie or book. The staff are the soul of courtesy, as are the guides, who have spent years in the forest, watching the chimpanzees with a studied interest, understanding their individual personalities, following their internal politics, even (to a point) learning their chimpish language.
The rarest commodities on Earth are peace and quiet. Safari might imply those qualities, but Ruaha, Katavi, and Mahale, little-known yet rich in biodiversity and old-fashioned spirit, assuredly provide both in ample quantity.
