Reviews of Ruaha (From 10 Acclaimed Safari Experts)

Expert

Harriet Nimmo –

ZA

Visited: June

Harriet is a zoologist with more than 20 years’ experience. She has the privilege of working with the world’s top wildlife photographers and photo-guides.

2 people found this review helpful.

Baobabs & Elephants

Overall rating

4/5

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Ruaha National Park is part of the southern safari circuit in Tanzania, and some safari itineraries combine Ruaha with Nyerere (formerly Selous). Although it is Tanzania’s second-largest park, it is little visited, due to its remoteness, and so you get a real sense of wilderness staying here. It is stunningly beautiful, with the Ruaha River meandering through, speckled with hippos and crocs. My abiding memory is the huge baobabs, dwarfing the herds of elephants. We failed to see lions despite other travellers’ tales of the big prides they’d seen. Ruaha has fantastic birding, with some real specials, such as the black-collared lovebird, Eleonora’s falcon and the localised Tanzanian red-billed hornbill. The best time to go is July to September during the dry season.

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Expert

Ariadne van Zandbergen –

ZA

Visited: Multiple times

Ariadne is a renowned African wildlife photographer whose work is featured in many well-known guidebooks and magazines.

9 people found this review helpful.

Diversity in Ruaha National Park

Overall rating

4/5

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I love Ruaha National Park. It feels wild and untrammeled and yet, wildlife viewing is superb. Animal densities are perhaps a bit lower than in Serengeti National Park, but with less temptation to drive from one thing to the next, quality sightings are the norm. The arid landscape, punctuated by dry riverbeds, boulder-strewn hills, rocky cliffs and massive baobab trees, provides a dramatic environment for game drives.

Large elephant herds gather in the riverbeds to dig for water. When the giants have moved on, baboons and other opportunistic animals use these holes to quench their thirst as well. Ruaha is known for its large lion prides. On our last visit we spent a lot of time with a pride counting more than 25, including two sets of small- and medium-sized cubs. To feed so many tummies, the lions must hunt regularly, and you might be lucky to see some action. Leopards are often seen on the rocky cliffs where they feed on hyrax. But I couldn’t believe my luck when we found one of these agile cats lazing on a branch of a baobab tree. It certainly made for an iconic image. Big cats aside, the most highly prized predator in Ruaha is the African wild dog. Denning season (June to August) is the best time to look for them.

There is no other park in Tanzania that offers such an extensive variety in antelope, including some of the most impressive species. Greater kudu is so common here, we became blasé about seeing them. Lesser kudu is notoriously skittish, but we saw several darting off in the bush as well. If you know where to look, you should find roan and sable antelope too. It takes some dedication to track down the latter though, as they tend to stick to tsetse-fly-infested mopane woodland areas.

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Expert

Mary Fitzpatrick –

US

Visited: Multiple times

Mary is an acclaimed travel writer and author of many Lonely Planet guidebooks, including South Africa, Tanzania, East Africa and Africa.

10 people found this review helpful.

Elephants & Baobabs

Overall rating

4/5

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Ruaha is notable both for its unique wilderness scenery – rugged, arid vistas punctuated by massive baobabs and backed by purple-hued hills – and for its great variety of wildlife, which includes a mix of East and southern African species.

The peak months for visiting are July through October, when wildlife spotting is highly rewarding. Ruaha is particularly known for its large numbers of elephants. Other draws are wild dogs (although these can be elusive – I have yet to spot any here), buffaloes, and both roan and sable antelopes. The Great Ruaha River, with its rocky outcrops, slumbering hippos, lazy crocodiles and wealth of birds, is wonderful.

Ruaha is easily accessed by road from the gateway town of Iringa, or by flight, and its rehabilitated bandas and riverside camping are a treat for budget travellers. Wildlife can be difficult to spot off-season (particularly March through May), so it’s worth trying to plan your visit for the drier months.

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Expert

Lizzie Williams –

ZA

Visited: Multiple times

Lizzie is a reputed guidebook writer and author of the Footprint guides to South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

10 people found this review helpful.

Good variety of wildlife in formidable landscapes

Overall rating

4/5

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With vast concentrations of buffalo, elephant and plains game and healthy populations of the big cats, I’ve always had interesting and varied game-viewing in Ruaha. In fact, as soon as you enter the park at the Ibuguziwa Gate (where you first cross the Ruaha River) and drive the short distance to the flat savannah around Msembe (airstrip and park headquarters), there are fantastic first sightings of animals and birds; always a good indication of what’s in store. It was at Msembe that I once parked the vehicle to watch several matriarch-led elephant herds travelling across the yellow-grass plains in almost every direction. The Ruaha River is the main feature of the park, good for excellent hippo and crocodile watching from the riverside lodges, but another attractive feature is the Mwagusi and Mdonya sand rivers. These are startlingly white in the dry season when kudu, giraffe, impala and zebra kick up the sand in thousands of hoof-prints, while they swell with fresh, clear water during and after the rainy seasons, creating splashes of green in the otherwise dry and brittle environment. My other Ruaha highlight is the tremendous landscapes. Given that most of the park is on the top of a 900m plateau, the ripples of broken hills and small mountains make a wonderful frame for the river valleys, miombo woodlands and open grassland.

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Expert

Brian Jackman –

UK

Visited: September

Brian is an award winning travel writer, author of safari books and regular contributor to magazines such as BBC Wildlife and Travel Africa.

13 people found this review helpful.

The Park that Time Forgot

Overall rating

4/5

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As your plane drops in towards Msembe airstrip the view from the air says it all. You see a line of broken hills, zebras stampeding across a yellow plain, and a mighty sand river bordered by flat-topped acacias with giraffes beyond, measuring the yawning distance of a park even bigger than the Serengeti. There is nothing gentle about the Ruaha. This is the real thing, the old, wild Africa of long ago. Its plains are littered with granite boulders. The combretum thickets are alive with kudu, and wherever you look there are grotesque baobabs and hurrying herds of elephants. The more you follow its ochre game trails through the smouldering purple hills the more it grabs you.

What’s more, this is serious lion country. When I stayed with Chris Fox in 2008 he knew of 185 lions within 20 miles of his camp on the Mwagusi Sand River. I saw some of them, including an awesome coalition of five nomadic males hell-bent on taking over the local pride. Much of the park is a tsetse-infested wilderness of impenetrable miombo woodland; but the north around Mwagusi and where the great Ruaha Sand River lies is much more open and accessible, with a good chance of finding leopard, cheetah - even wild dogs.

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Expert

Kim Wildman –

AU

Visited: June

Kim is a travel writer who authored and updated over 15 guidebooks, including Lonely Planet's South Africa and Bradt's Tanzania guides.

14 people found this review helpful.

Into the Wild

Overall rating

4/5

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If you want a safari experience away from the crowds, Ruaha National Park is the place to head to. In spite of being Tanzania’s second-largest national park after Nyerere, it still remains one of the country’s wildest and most undeveloped game reserves, which is exactly what I find most appealing about it. When you consider the park is home to more than 12,000 elephants, as well as large populations of buffalo, zebra, giraffe, lions, kudu and antelope, it’s easy to see why those in the know consider it to be one of Tanzania’s best-kept secrets.

While we easily spotted numerous giraffe, zebra, kudu, impala and elephant, we struggled to spy any lions in spite of the fact that the park supports a very healthy lion population. When we finally happened across two lone males, our driver managed to scare them off before we’d even raised our cameras. He also managed to irritate a very large bull elephant by barrelling through the middle of its herd. In all my years of game viewing, I’ve never actually seen a riled-up elephant charge at full speed before, nor seen a driver that scared. Word to the wise: make sure you hire an expert safari driver if you’re taking your own vehicle.

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