Ruaha National Park

The vast wilderness of the Ruaha National Park is located in the south-west of the country. It’s Tanzania’s second largest National Park, yet the Ruaha is visited by only a handful of travellers each year. At the park’s heart is the Great Ruaha River, a massive watercourse that dwindles to only a few pools in the dry season, but bursts its banks and roars over boulders at the height of the rains. Between the Ruaha and its tributary rivers is an unspoilt landscape of plains, rocky gullies, thick woodland and distant purple hills.

The river’s waters provide a life force for predators and prey alike – antelope such as waterbuck, impala and Grant’s gazelle risk their lives on the Ruaha’s shores in their search for water – the shores of the river are a fertile hunting ground for predators such as lion, leopard, jackal, hyena and the rare African wild dog. Ruaha is one of the best places to see these much-misunderstood predators, reviled for years but now protected as an endangered species. Likewise, Ruaha is an excellent place to spend some time studying elephant behaviour – these great mammals were poached almost to extinction in the 1980s, but Ruaha’s elephant population has recovered strongly in recent years and is now the largest in East Africa.