2 Days Katavi National Park

2 Days Tour Overview:

The far west of Tanzania gives home to two of Tanzania’s lesser known national parks: Katavi National Park and Mahale Mountains National Park. This western circuit is extremely remote, tricky to access and pretty costly to visit. As a result few people make the effort to come here and so it has remained an untouched, unique experience, and absolutely worth visiting.

Katavi National Park is a name to conjure with. It is one of the best parks in Africa and many safari operations would love to start camps here. However, the logistics and costs are so difficult, that there are only a couple of small, permanent safari camps sharing this 4,500km² of wilderness. You sometimes run across more prides of lion than other people on a game drive.

Visit Katavi National Park

Katavi National Park is a Tanzanian national park created in 1974 and is located in western Tanzania, close to Lake Tanganyika. The park encompasses the Katuma River and the seasonal Lake Katavi and Lake Chada floodplains. It is a very remote park that is much less frequented than other national parks in Tanzania, making it a true hidden gem and unique secret to discover. Despite its remoteness, the park is large and ranks as Tanzania’s third largest national park.

Wildlife features include large animal herds, particularly of Buffaloes, zebras, giraffes, and elephants, plus along the Katuma river, crocodiles and hippos which upon annual dry seasons results in mudholes that can be packed with hundreds of hippos. Carnivorous animals that roam this park are cheetahs, wild dogs, hyenas, leopards, and lions.

The total number of visitors per year is around 1.000 to 1.500 people, making it one of the few places where you will hardly find any other visitors during your stay and a paradise for animals and safari lovers likewise. As a result, there is only a hand full of permanent camps at Katavi, namely the Mbali Mbali Katavi Lodge, the Foxes Camp on the Katuma Plain and the Chada Camp on the Chada Plain. These camps each have a visitor capacity limit of approximately one dozen each.

Getting to Katavi is best by plane from Arusha (3 hours), Mwanza (2 hours) and Daressalaam (3 hours). All flights require landing on an airstrip; the Ikuu airstrip (near Ikuu Rangerpost) has minimal services and operates only twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays. Access to Katavi by Jeep is possible but requires at least 1 day for arrival and 1 day for departure.

Katavi National Park offers great game viewing all year round but reaches its peak during the dry season from June to November or December when the animals gather in their thousands around scarce water sources.

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