Mikumi National Park
A real safari four hours from Dar es Salaam, no flight needed.
Overview
Mikumi is Tanzania’s fourth-largest national park at 3,230 square kilometres, and the only big one you can reach from the coast on tarmac in a morning. The Morogoro highway runs to its gate, which makes it the practical answer for anyone with a few days rather than two weeks. Its centre is the Mkata floodplain, open grassland broken by borassus palms and flat-topped acacia, with the Uluguru and Rubeho mountains on either horizon — people compare the view to the Serengeti, and the comparison is fair. Elephant, buffalo, zebra, giraffe, impala and wildebeest are all resident, lion are seen regularly and sometimes up in the acacias, and the floodplain is about the most reliable place in Tanzania for eland. Sable and greater kudu hold in the miombo to the south, where the park runs into Nyerere and the two form one ecosystem.