Expert Reviews
Pure and peaceful wilderness
Nyerere National Park (formerly Selous) won’t appeal to the first-time safari-goer simply because its vastness means animals are not seen easily around every bend on a game drive. It doesn’t mean that they are not there of course; far from it, this wilderness is home to a huge diversity and...
An Underrated Gem
Little-known Mikumi, an extension of the vast Selous ecosystem, is the country’s fifth-largest national park, and a popular goal for weekend breaks out of the port city Dar es Salaam, or as an initial pit stop on a more extensive safari through southern Tanzania. However, because it is bisected by...
Wildlife Watching Just off the Highway
Mikumi's highlights are its ease of access (it's an easy four-hour drive from Dar es Salaam along the main highway), its reasonably-priced lodges and the chance it offers to see a good array of wildlife within a short amount of time. Every time I've visited the park, I've been lucky enough to see...
A stretch of typical savannah with unexpected game-viewing on Tanzania’s Great North Road
Straddling the Morogoro-Iringa highway, Mikumi has typical woodland and grassy plains, and the lush vegetation of the Mkata River floodplain attracts a fair variety of animals and birds throughout the year. I’ve passed through en route between Tanzania and Malawi, and game-viewing is as simple as...
A road runs through it
Mikumi’s relative proximity to Dar es Salaam makes the park the perfect weekend getaway, so you'll generally find a few more tourists here than in the Southern Circuit’s more remote Ruaha National Park. With the Tanzam Highway running straight through the centre of the park, it doesn’t have...
Ideal Stopover on the Tanzam Highway
With the Tanzania–Zambia highway bisecting the park, Mikumi National Park lacks the wilderness appeal for which other reserves in southern Tanzania are known. But for me, Mikumi is perfect to break up the trip from Dar es Salaam to Ruaha National Park. I’ve always found the game viewing very...