Mahale

Mahale National Park is Tanzania's most remote park, and is bordered by Lake Tanganyika, the largest freshwater lake in the world and the second deepest. It is mainly forested and mountainous and can only be explored on foot. Mahale National Park is also rich in birdlife as well as being home to kudu, eland, roan and sable antelope. Buffalo, elephant, lion and leopard can also be found here. Mahale National Park has a unique ecology with lowland forests, open woodland as well as moist and dry grasslands. Access to the park is by boat or plane as there are no roads, and this remoteness, coupled with the quality of accommodation here, does make visiting here an expensive option.

However Mahale Park's principle attraction is, of course, that it is widely regarded as the best location for seeing wild chimpanzees in the whole of Africa. Walking safaris (from May to October) are the only way to get around here, and hence these also provide the ideal opportunity to see the chimps in their natural habitat. Incidentally, it was in the more northerly Gombe Stream National Park, also fronting on to Lake Tanganyika, that Dr Jane Goodall carried out her world famous research into chimpanzee behaviour.