Mahale Mountains National Park

Mahale is one of the most beautiful and least reachable parks in Africa: a range of forested mountains rising to over two thousand metres directly out of Lake Tanganyika, with no road access at all, so you arrive by light aircraft and then by boat along a shore of white sand coves backed by jungle. Its purpose is chimpanzees: the park, opened in 1985, is one of only two protected areas for the eastern chimpanzee in Tanzania and holds the country's largest known population. A community here has been studied since the 1960s and is thoroughly habituated, so trackers can usually find them, and visitors follow on foot up steep, humid forest slopes for an hour with the group, watching grooming, feeding and the constant negotiation of chimpanzee politics at very close range. The rest of the time is spent on the beach, snorkelling in the astonishingly clear lake among its endemic cichlids, or kayaking below the mountains. The combination of chimps, forest and a freshwater lake beach is unique.

Highlights

• Chimpanzee tracking - an hour with a habituated community, on foot in the forest.
• Lake Tanganyika - swimming and snorkelling in exceptionally clear water among cichlids.
• The mountain forest - steep jungle rising straight from the shore.
• The beach camps - white sand coves reachable only by boat.

When to go

May to October, the dry season, is the main window, when the forest trails are passable and the chimps tend to range lower on the slopes; the wet months make tracking hard and many camps close. Trips are typically four nights or more because of the effort of getting in and out.

What to expect

Access is the great obstacle and the great expense: light aircraft charters and lodge packages put this among the costliest destinations in Africa, and getting there and back eats days. Tracking is genuinely strenuous, climbing steep, hot, muddy forest, and it is never guaranteed. Face masks are required near the chimps and anyone unwell is turned back, because human illness can devastate them. Time with the group is capped at an hour.

Nearby

Katavi National Park is often combined by air; Kigoma and Gombe lie north along the lake.

Key facts