Ruaha

You drive all day and do not see another vehicle. Ruaha is Tanzania's largest national park, 20,226 square kilometres, and fewer than 5,000 people visit it in a year. In the Serengeti you might share a sighting with a dozen vehicles. Here it is you, your guide and the river. This is how safari used to be.

The Great Ruaha River is the park's lifeblood. In the dry season every elephant, lion, leopard and crocodile for hundreds of kilometres comes down to its banks. The river runs low and slow. Along the sand you see breeding herds of elephant in their hundreds, lions sprawled in the shade of the riverine trees, and giant crocodiles motionless on the sandbars.

Ruaha is also one of the few parks in Tanzania where you can still walk. On foot with an armed guide, you track animals through the bush. You hear the grass. You read the tracks. For the first time the wilderness is not a backdrop. It is a living system, and you are moving through it.

At a Glance

Ruaha