A Tent With A View Safaris was born in 1995 and set up by 2 friends; Masoud (Masa) Kilanga and David Guthrie. Masa & David first met whilst working as safari guides in Selous in 1991. Masa had been working in Selous since 1988 and between them, David and Masa have over 40 years experience in Selous.
In 1995 we set about building our first lodge in Saadani National Park, the only coastal wildlife park in East Africa; Saadani at that time was still a game reserve. We were the very first safari operators with a permanent lodge in Saadani and back in those days were at the forefront of anti-poaching efforts. After Saadani gained national park status in 2005, the Tanzania National Parks Authority (TANAPA) set about working hard on park infrastructure and today animal numbers have vastly increased. July 2010 saw the start of a combined elephant collaring initiative between A Tent With A View, TANAPA and renowned elephant expert Dr Alfred Kikoti which has been a dream of David & Masa’s since they started in Saadani back in 1995. The Saadani elephants appear to favour the Northern section of the park where we regularly see herds of between 70-100 elephants not far from our current lodge in the Mkwaja area.
The lodge in Saadani began as a modest semi permanent camp with tents and a basic restaurant and bar area and from there slowly started to grow into something more permanent as the Tent With A View name became better known and business increased. Sable Mountain Lodge followed in 1999 and in 2009 we completed our Southern circuit of lodges by opening The Zanzibari in Nungwi, Zanzibar.
Our focus has always been on wildlife conservation and through the Tanzanian team, we have inevitably become involved with the local communities close to the lodges, namely Kisaki in Selous and Mkwaja in Saadani. As well as these projects and the Saadani elephant project, in the last 3 years, we have also begun a new project to help raise funds for the education of the children of Kododo Village in the Uluguru mountains. For more information on our project work, please click on “Putting Something Back”.
The majority of the A Tent With A View team have worked with Masa and David since the start of the company. You can meet some of the key players in “Meet the Team”. Masa and David continue to run the company with the help of a great team and a super group of key people at its heart whom you can meet by clicking “Meet the team”.
