Oloitiko Tanzania Safaris
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Mahale Mountains National Park

National park

Chimpanzees in forested mountains that fall straight into Lake Tanganyika. Remote, expensive, and unlike anywhere else in Africa.

Mahale is a long way from everything, and that is the point. The mountains rise out of Lake Tanganyika on Tanzania’s western border, and their forests hold roughly a thousand chimpanzees — one community of which has been studied since the 1960s and is thoroughly habituated.

You track them on foot, uphill, in humidity, and when you find them you sit within a few metres of animals that share almost all of your DNA and behave in ways that are uncomfortably familiar. Then you walk back down and swim in a lake so clear you can see your feet in ten metres of water.

There are no roads in the park. You arrive by light aircraft and then by boat. It is one of the most expensive things you can do in Tanzania and one of the very few that nobody comes back ambivalent about.

From our guides

Give it four nights. Chimp tracking is not guaranteed on any single day, and getting there takes too long to gamble on two.

Why come here

  • Chimpanzee trekking with a long-habituated community
  • Lake Tanganyika — the second-deepest lake on earth, and startlingly clear
  • No roads and no vehicles anywhere in the park
  • Snorkelling among endemic cichlids

The wildlife

Chimpanzees are the reason to come. Also red colobus, red-tailed and blue monkey, bushpig and, rarely seen, leopard. The lake holds hundreds of endemic cichlid species.

When to visit

The dry season from May to October is when the chimps are usually lower down and easier to reach. Most camps close from around March to May.

Mahale Mountains National Park through the year

May

Weather

Drying out; camps reopening

Wildlife

Chimps often lower down and easier to reach

The migration

—

How busy

Quiet

Price season

High season

Our rating

Things to do

Experiences here

Chimpanzee trekking

Tracking a habituated chimpanzee community on foot in the Mahale Mountains.

Mahale Mountains National Park, answered

Build Mahale Mountains National Park into a route that works.

One park is rarely a trip. Tell us how long you have and what else you want to see, and we will put Mahale in the right place in the right week.

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