A safari company should be defined by its guides — not its marketing.
Why KisangaraAfrica’s largest protected ecosystem — at 5% of the visitor density.
Southern CircuitGombe Stream, Mahale Mountains, and Katavi — places that require genuine commitment to reach.
Western Tanzania — the region bordering Lake Tanganyika and the Democratic Republic of Congo — is the least visited and, in some respects, the most extraordinary part of the country. It contains Tanzania's best chimpanzee trekking, its most remote national park, and one of the most significant primatological research sites on Earth.
Mahale Mountains National Park has no roads. There is no road access to the park at all. Arrival is by boat across Lake Tanganyika — a four to five hour journey on the world's longest freshwater lake — from the town of Kigoma, reached by a 90-minute flight from Dar es Salaam. The park protects a habituated community of approximately 60 wild chimpanzees — the M-group, followed and documented by researchers from Kyoto University since 1965. Chimpanzee trekking in Mahale is the finest in Africa: dense forest, steep terrain, encounters that can last three to four hours with a habituated community that is genuinely comfortable with human presence.
Gombe Stream National Park is Jane Goodall's research site — the location of the longest continuous wildlife study in history, running since 1960. The park is tiny (52 km²) but historically and scientifically significant beyond measure. The habituated Kasekela chimpanzee community numbers approximately 60 individuals. Trekking in Gombe is different from Mahale — shorter, less demanding terrain, but with the added dimension of being in the specific forest where Goodall made her foundational discoveries about chimpanzee tool use and social behaviour.
"The boat journey to Mahale was four hours across the longest freshwater lake on Earth. We arrived at a beach with a forest rising steeply behind it. On the first morning we found the M-group within forty minutes. We spent three hours with them. I have never experienced anything like it in twenty years of safari."
Dr. Helen R.Oxford · Mahale Expedition · 2024"Katavi in September. The Katuma River pool had 200 hippos in it. Lions were feeding on the bank. A crocodile was in the shallows. Our guide said this is why you come to Katavi. He was right."
Marc T.Geneva · Western Circuit · September 2024