Ruaha National Park

Ruaha is not a park you stumble into by accident. At 45,000 square kilometres — larger than Switzerland — it is Tanzania’s largest national park, and one of the least visited. Fewer than 2,000 tourists come here each year. On a good day, you might see one other vehicle at a wildlife sighting. On a great day, you might see none at all.

This is the reward for making the journey. The park sits at the junction of eastern and southern African ecological zones, meaning you will see species from both — reticulated giraffes from the east, southern species like tsessebe and Lichtenstein’s hartebeest. The stars of Ruaha, however, are the wild dogs. With an estimated 120 individuals, Ruaha has one of the strongest wild dog populations in Africa, and sightings are far more regular than in Tanzania’s busier parks.

The park’s centrepiece is the Great Ruaha River, which flows along its eastern boundary and is the lifeline for everything that lives here. During the dry season, elephant herds numbering in the hundreds gather at its remaining pools, lions patrol the banks, and hippos crowd into the deepest sections. Your guide has spent years reading this landscape — they know which pools hold the biggest hippo pods, where the lions hunt in the early morning, and which rocky outcrops the leopards prefer.