Katavi National Park
Tanzania’s third-largest park, and one of its emptiest.
Overview
Katavi covers 4,471 square kilometres of miombo woodland, seasonal lakes and floodplain in Tanzania’s far west, and receives a tiny fraction of the Serengeti’s visitors. What it offers in exchange is concentration. As the dry season advances the Katuma River shrinks to a chain of muddy pools, and the hippo and crocodile that spent the wet season spread across Lake Katavi and Lake Chada pack into them — one of the densest gatherings of large animals anywhere in East Africa, and an unsettling one to watch. Buffalo move across the Chada and Katisunga plains in herds several hundred strong, with lion following them. Elephant, giraffe, zebra, eland, roan and sable all occur, and the woodland holds the dry-country birds that the northern circuit does not. There is almost no road network and very few beds, so a day here is spent largely alone.