Tanzania Safari – Discover The Things You Have Never Done Before

Most people going for a safari in Tanzania are interested in the Big Five. These were traditionally the animals considered to be the most difficult and dangerous to hunt. The Big Five animals consist of the Lion, the Elephant, the Buffalo, the Leopard and the Black Rhino. Of these the Black Rhino can only be spotted in the Ngorongoro Crater and the leopards are shy, and the highest probability of seeing them is in the Northern Region of the Serengeti (the Seronera Valley). Besides the Big Five, more than 80 large Mammal species call Tanzania home, living in the 25% of the area of the country that has been demarcated into conservation areas and National Parks.  

Tanzania has some of the best places that cater for an African Safari. Not only does it hold about 20% of the continent’s mammal biomass, it is also home to Mt Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in the continent, the Ngorongoro crater, which besides having the densest wildlife population, is the largest intact caldera in the world, the largest lakes in Africa (Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi), the second largest number of variety of birds found in the continent and Olduvai Gorge, where some of the most important hominid fossils were found and the location where the Great Wildebeest Migration takes place.

Despite its abundance of natural wealth, Tanzania was not well known as a safari destination until recently, as it was overshadowed by both Kenya and South Africa. This was both due to lack of infrastructure, tourist centric policies and money spent in marketing. However, this has changed since the last two decades, where premier safari lodges and camps compete for the luxury market tourists and budget and mid-tier camps for the rest. There are now Tanzania safari packages that are tailored to help visitors experience the incredible variety of wild game found here. The areas occupied by many national parks and reserves have been expanded to cover important channels and routes that are used by the wildlife. There are also been a heavy crackdown on poaching and other illegal activities by bringing villages into the fold and enlisting their help in protecting the animals. This article compares the differences between a safari in Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa.    

The most interesting part about East Africa is the large amounts of natural conservation areas that occur naturally. To know why this happens, it is important to understand the Great Rift Valley. About twenty (or thirty) million years ago, the plateau that comprises of the bulk of East Africa was broken up by a shift in the tectonic plates. As these plates shifted away from one another, they led to the creation of huge gaps, which were populated by deep lakes and volcanoes along the rift and its branches. In fact, the lakes Natron and Malawi lie in the main rift itself, while Lake Tanganyika in the western branch. The volcanoes of Mt Kilimanjaro, Mt Meru and the Ngorongoro, were all formed by this same seismic event. Many of the most famous Tanzania safari locations exist only because of this.

Since these events, millions of years have passed, and the areas, buoyed by the availability of water, fertile soil, grasslands and forests have become a sanctuary for wildlife.

The Tanzania safari map is divided into regions shaped by the geographical structure of the country. The Northern parks consist of the Serengeti, Lake Manyara, Tarangire and the Ngorongoro. The western part of the Serengeti and Ngorongoro are close to Lake Victoria, which itself occupies a massive area and straddles the countries of Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.

The western region of Tanzania is bordered by Lake Tanganyika and the Mahale Mountains, Katavi National Parks and Uwanda Game Reserve are found here.

The southern border of Tanzania has the great Malawi Lake and the conserved areas here include the Rungwa and the Ruaha National Parks in the centre and the Mikumi National Park and the Selous Game reserve in the south.

Every season has advantages - time is highly dependent on which parts of Tanzania you want to include in your itinerary. It is important to know the rainfall patterns as they directly affect the vegetation and hence control the regions in which the animals are found. Tanzania experiences most of its rainfall between the months of November and May, with a short dry spell in between. The long rains start from March and last till the middle of June. This coincides with the availability of vegetation and grazing grounds and hence with the calving periods of the ungulates. The long dry spell, from June to October, sees the majority of animals like the wildebeest and zebras, to migrate towards the northern regions, where there is better availability of water and feed. Therefore different areas of the northern parts are better during different months. The end of the dry season, during November, sees these areas being repopulated with the migrating wildlife.