Ruaha National Park

The Great Ruaha River is the centrepiece of this wonderful park. It is remote, wild and very beautiful. The baobab trees constitute one of many highlights, providing a dramatic backdrop for the wildlife and birds that abound. Special sightings could include lesser kudu and the Tanzanian red-billed hornbill. (My tip: Don't miss the wonderful museum dedicated to Chief Mkwawa of the Hehe tribe near Kalinga on your way in. It is well worth a stop!)

Ruaha has big and natural beautiful animals seems to be close to Katavi but Katavi still the best.

An amazing and exciting safaritrip!

Coming from the Netherlands we drove from Iringa to Ruaha National Park to stay there at the Ruaha River Lodge next to the river Ruaha. The accomodation was stunning. Sitting on the veranda the wildlife was passing on the riverside in front of our eyes. Elephants, girafs, impala's, lions, baboons, all kinds of birds, crocodile and the amazing hippo-pool in front of our logde. The lodge itself was comfortable and clean.
The food in the restaurant was very good as well as the wine.
We had our own transportation, so we hired a guide, who did his job very well, and saw a lot of animals.
Highlights were 2 occasions with elephants: First we saw on the riverside more then 45 elephants, a kind of gathering, while we were enjoying the vieuw relaxing on the veranda of the lodge. Second was a scary one: an elephant mother (matriarch) was protecting her herd and she came to attack us. But the guide helped by putting off the motor and explaining what we had to do. It was really an adventure! One we will never forget.
The scenery is magnificent, especially the vieuw at the river looking to the mountains on sunset and sunrise.
The weather was in june not too hot and comfortable.

Our visits to Tanzania were among the most memorable experiences of my life

All aspects of our visit to Ruaha National Park were excellent. Our daughter worked for several years for the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, and while she was there my wife and I visited her twice, once in 2003 and once in 2005. Our arrangements for tours and guides were a bit unique, in that our daughter used her local contacts to arrange for tours and guides, and all of those arrangements turned out to be absolutely excellent. During our visits to Tanzania we visited the Ngorongoro crater, the Serengeti plains, The Oldavi gorge, northern Ethiopia, and my daughter and I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. All of our experiences were thrilling, and I would not hesitate to recommend a visit to that part if the world to anyone.

Great Park and less people

Lot's of animals. We saw everything we wanted to see including a cheetah, and two lions. We only saw two other Land Cruisers while we were here.

This is probably my favourite park of all. The bush vibe is intense!! I absolutely love this park! We stayed in the old bandas and had to be careful at night after a very close call with a hippo passing just by us. There are no fences between the campsite and the savannah and we could hear the lions within a hundred metres of us at night roaring. Elephants passed right by at night. The game spotting was insane. We saw cheetahs, countless lions, and way too many other amazing sightings to list. This park is amazing.

Had a great time camping in the bush

I really enjoyed seeing Ruaha. I've been to the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, and Selous before, but Ruaha was still really impressive for several reasons: First, we camped in Ruaha, which you can't do everywhere (especially not for the reasonable rates that you get in Ruaha). And when I say 'camped', I really mean camped - we took our own tent and set up camp in a little-used private campsite. We cooked over a campfire, and sat out under the stars. No other camps or people anywhere close. That's another of the benefits to Ruaha - there just aren't as many people there as in the Northern Circuit parks (especially Serengeti and Ngorongoro). Third, although the Northern Circuit may be a bit better for seeing wildlife, you certainly won't be disappointing at Ruaha! In two days, I saw elephants, lions, greater kudu, impala, giraffe, baboons, vervet monkeys, nile and savanah monitor lizards (one Savanah monitor even spent the afternoon, evening, night, and the next morning in a tree over our camp), hippos, black-backed jackals, banded and lesser mongoose, and lots of birds (2 spotted eagle owls, several bustards, lilac-breasted rollers and European rollers, shrikes, buffalo-weavers, white-headed vultures, fish eagles, brown-hooded kingfishers, pied kingfishers, lots of Franklins and other quail, guinea fowl, red-billed hornbills, ground hornbills, hammerkops, among others). If you go with a tour guide, you're liable to see even more, since they communicate with each other by radio to learn where all the key animals are (I went with a couple local Tanzanians).

April isn't the most popular time to visit - there's more rain and more vegetation, which decreases visibility on safaris, but we had very little rain, still saw a good sampling of wildlife, and had the added benefit of the park being practically empty.

As wild as possible

When I was thinking about visiting Tanzania, it was primary because of marine reservation park in Mafia Island and whale sharks. But when you travel half the world you want to see as much as possible right? So visiting one of the inland national parks was obvious. And the I saw a BBC documentary about Ruaha, and it was clear as a sky where to go.
Ruaha was my second Africa national park (Kruger was the first one) and I have to say I was blown away by the nature and the wildness. Right the day when we get to accommodation we saw two lioness close to the watering hole and we where there alone. Just me and my wife, sitting silently in the car listening to the birds and the breathing of the two lioness. And then herd of elephants come to the same watering hole and drove the lions away. I guess that is what watching the wild means. During the whole week we saw around only 8 other cars cruising the park, rest of the time it was just us and plain nature. The best way how to enjoy the park is to pack some supplies, drove early morning to some place where the animals gather (watering holes, fords, pools, river) sit and watch the animals coming and going and you will be rewarded for sure. Of course you need your own car.
I have been there during dry season - November - and the temperature was enormous - 50C during the day and 35 during the night. So be aware of this while there is no air conditioning in the accommodation and zircon in the car is useless while you drive so slowly through the park that it is not working well. The accommodation is basic. We stayed in the cottages (run directly by the NP). Two rooms, toilet + shower. Price 50USD pp/pn. Yes, I know it is quite a price for basic accommodation. The cheaper type, bandas, 30USD pp/pn, don’t have toilet and shower and basically it is just a metal hut with bed. And metal hut in 50C degrees during the day quickly change in to an oven. So the accommodation and the services absolutely do not match the price, but you have to accept that you pay a lot because there is no other way. In the whole Ruaha there is no proper shop, just two dinning places, where you get mostly chicken and rice or potatoes. So if you can, bring a lot of your own supplies. The only thinks you can buy there is bier, water, coke, rum and gin. Hope they restock the rum and gin while they had only one bottles, which we bought out. And of course in the cottages there is no fridge, I never drunk so much warm bier as in Ruaha.
The great think about staying few nights in Ruaha is, that the accommodation is not fenced. So you sit a front of the cottage enjoying the view and suddenly there is a herd of kudus just five meters a front of you, or hyena. Regular guest every evening, looking for some leftovers.
You wanna stay in the wild and under proper roof at the same time? You have enough money to spent? You have your own car (our 4x4 Toyota Rav 4 was OK)? Than Ruaha is perfect place to spent few days and watch and listen.

fantastic experience

where do i start?
Lets start at the beginning, left our camp which was located just about 7 km from the gate at around 6 in the morning in a land rover puma and a toyota, it was a huge squad of about 20 people.
at the gate, we meet the rangers in charge of collecting the entrance fees, the guys where awesome and kind, they even gave us a heads up on where to find what.

this time we didn't sleep in the national park, but there are so many options on different pricing if your interested, the cheapest are the government open campsites and the national parks hostels, where food can be bought at the rangers village inside the park or make your own food:)

the weather on the day was extremely hot "but what did we expect?? we were in the rift valley anyways it was bound to be hot" but later in the day it started raining just as we stopped for our lunch at one of the parks picnic sites.

the scenery was out of this world, the dry mwagusi river turned out to be an awesome animal spotting ground, and the greenery of the park did the landscape justice

we didn't have a guide, just a group of youngies. but we stopped all then guides in the other cars and they where very helpful and showed us all the places where we found leopards and lions and buffalos and crocs and hippos.

we saw so many animals families upon families of elephants, so many antelopes and impalas and kudus and jackals and pumbas and timons, zebras, baboons, so many different birds, squirrels, giraffes, and many more, and the wild flowers there are just beautiful.

the highlight of our trip is when a ranging male elephant chased one of our cars i was in the car behind just looking at the action i forgot to even film haha. and ruaha elephants are known to be one of the largest in east africa (after the ngorongoro and tarangire ones).

all in all i would do this again. i had a fantastic time, hope you have fun visiting ruaha :)

We arrives in Ruaha late in the evening in a heavy rainstorm so it was only next morning when i looked out of my window at the Ruaha Cottages and saw granite mountains, elephants and Giraffes grazing aloong the Ruaha river in the valley below that the wild beauty of it hit me . Its simply unbelievably, heart-breakingly stunning.