The largest national park in Africa might not come with a world-famous reputation, but it certainly presents the wildest encounters for those who know what to look for. Ruaha National Park is most famous for its fascinating beauty, ancient baobab trees, picturesque river and dramatic scenes. It offers incredibly exciting wildlife viewing experiences to its visitors. Highlights of time spent here include: African wild dogs, giraffe, greater kudu, sable antelope, lesser kudu, zebra, impala, bushbuck, buffalo, gazelle, waterbuck, elephant, lions, black-backed jackals, cheetahs, leopards and spotted hyenas. Best season to visit is June to October and the nearby attractions include Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar.
Personal account – Remote national park with great wildlife
We spent five nights in this large, remote national park. It is accessible by plane from Dar es Salaam via Selous Game Reserve. Hunting is completely forbidden. There are no villages inside the park – just a few camps, far away from each other. This made the animals very relaxed when a car approached, we literally had to (kindly) chase impalas off the road… The possibilities of spotting abundant wildlife are almost unlimited. However, the sheer size of the park sometimes made us drive for one or two with no mammal sightings. But this did not matter since nature offered plenty of other interesting things to see, like majestic baobab trees.
But Ruaha is the most famous for its carnivores – 10% of Africa’s lion population lives here. We were also lucky to see several leopards! During the dry season, the park’s rivers become sand rivers, the water flowing below the surface (which makes elephants dig holes in order to find water to drink). A nice side effect of the lack of standing water was that we literally encountered not a single mosquito. Overall, Ruaha offered great safari experiences with a very private touch as not many guests travel to this rather remote park (90% take the northern circuit with Serengeti and Ngorongoro).
Sources: www.bookmundi.com & TripAdvisor