Tanzania





Katavi National Park


Set within the remote arm of the Rift Valley that terminates in the shallow, brooding expanse of Lake Rukwa, Katavi is East Africa’s best-kept game viewing secret. The third-largest national park in Tanzania at 4,500 sq km, this isolated and untrammelled tract of wilderness remains one of the few reserves where you might drive around for days with encountering another tourist – a thrilling taste of Africa as it must have been a century ago

Katavi is the archetypal dry season park. Practically a no-go area during the rains, it comes into its own during the dry season, when the muddy trickle of the Katuma River forms the only source of drinking water for miles around, and the flanking floodplains support game concentrations that defy belief – including some of Africa’s most impressive concentrations of buffalo, elephant, hippo and crocodile.


 



Vegetation and habitats

Wildlife

Activities

Getting there

Where to stay

Nearby places of interest




Vegetation and habitats




Wildlife


An abundance of giraffe, zebra, impala and reedbuck provide easy pickings for the lion prides and hyena clans whose territories converge on the floodplains, while the brachystegia woodland supports substantial but elusive populations of the localised eland, sable and roan antelopes.




Activities






Getting there








Where to stay







Nearby places of interest



Checklist of conspicuous and noteworthy mammals: lion, leopard, spotted hyena, black-backed jackal,  Bohor reedbuck, Defassa waterbuck, puku, impala, Cokes hartebeest, topi, greater kudu, common eland, sable antelope, roan antelope, bushbuck, African elephant, African buffalo, common zebra, hippo, warthog, Maasai giraffe, yellow baboon, vervet monkey.