Ruaha National Park

hard to do better than this

This is one of my favorite game reserves in Tanzania, as it is a little more remote, and harder to get to. This means there are less people, and the wildlife is a little more plenty. I had an amazing time there, as I was fortunate to get to stay for a good 3 months, and really get to know the area. It is a HUGE park, and ranges from tropical/riverine conditions, to highland and even mountain like terrain where Roan can be found. Lots of buffalo, and elephant as well. I highly recommend this area.

Amazing experience - recommended!

We went in the low season and almost had the park to ourselves. I believe we only saw 4 other cars over the entire journey! The park itself is great; next time we'd also like to do a night safari!

Great Park and less people

Lot's of animals. We saw everything we wanted to see including a cheetah, and two lions. We only saw two other Land Cruisers while we were here.

Great wildlife viewing, quality accomodations, excellent experience start to finish

My wife and I took Coastal Aviation's last minute tour package, and had a wonderful experience from start to finish. The ground and flight crew at the airports were professional and got us there and back safely. Once we arrived, we were promptly picked up and immediately set out on our safari. Our guides were great and really went out of their way to make sure we had a great wildlife viewing experience. They were willing to head out very early and stay out as late as we wanted on our game drives.

The accommodations were pretty nice as well, with a great outdoor shower. It was great to be in a bush camp environment, and it really added to the whole safari experience. It was by no means 5*, but everything was excellent quality, especially for the price. There was even hot water! The food was the only thing that wasn't spectacular, but there was enough of it, which is probably more important.

This is probably my favourite park of all. The bush vibe is intense!! I absolutely love this park! We stayed in the old bandas and had to be careful at night after a very close call with a hippo passing just by us. There are no fences between the campsite and the savannah and we could hear the lions within a hundred metres of us at night roaring. Elephants passed right by at night. The game spotting was insane. We saw cheetahs, countless lions, and way too many other amazing sightings to list. This park is amazing.

Had a great time camping in the bush

I really enjoyed seeing Ruaha. I've been to the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, and Selous before, but Ruaha was still really impressive for several reasons: First, we camped in Ruaha, which you can't do everywhere (especially not for the reasonable rates that you get in Ruaha). And when I say 'camped', I really mean camped - we took our own tent and set up camp in a little-used private campsite. We cooked over a campfire, and sat out under the stars. No other camps or people anywhere close. That's another of the benefits to Ruaha - there just aren't as many people there as in the Northern Circuit parks (especially Serengeti and Ngorongoro). Third, although the Northern Circuit may be a bit better for seeing wildlife, you certainly won't be disappointing at Ruaha! In two days, I saw elephants, lions, greater kudu, impala, giraffe, baboons, vervet monkeys, nile and savanah monitor lizards (one Savanah monitor even spent the afternoon, evening, night, and the next morning in a tree over our camp), hippos, black-backed jackals, banded and lesser mongoose, and lots of birds (2 spotted eagle owls, several bustards, lilac-breasted rollers and European rollers, shrikes, buffalo-weavers, white-headed vultures, fish eagles, brown-hooded kingfishers, pied kingfishers, lots of Franklins and other quail, guinea fowl, red-billed hornbills, ground hornbills, hammerkops, among others). If you go with a tour guide, you're liable to see even more, since they communicate with each other by radio to learn where all the key animals are (I went with a couple local Tanzanians).

April isn't the most popular time to visit - there's more rain and more vegetation, which decreases visibility on safaris, but we had very little rain, still saw a good sampling of wildlife, and had the added benefit of the park being practically empty.

Hot and lots of Tzetze flies but still I love the place. It´s really wild.

Ruaha - if you want to avoid the crowd

Even though it is the largest National Park in Tanzania, it does not carry the same touristy tag as Serengeti. This was exactly why we chose this park during our first visit to Tanzania in June 2014.
The park is rather remote and we were flown in by Coastal Airways from Tarangire. The Kwihala Camp had 6 double-bedded tents and therefore had that personal touch from our hostess Sandra and her staff. The facilities at the camp were superb with great food and wine.
Our guides, Lorenzo and Leverd were full of enthusiasm and were not hesitant to go that extra mile whenever needed. The camp had a few vehicles and we were lucky enough to get a vehicle for just 2 of us most of the time. The vehicles are side-open (top-covered) which have their pros and cons – great for general wildlife viewing but rather restrictive to watch and photographs birds in flight. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/pravin_nahar/15493381299/in/album-72157649073470005/)
We were greeted with a superb sunset near the Ruaha river on the day of our arrival.

The usual arrays of wildlife and birds will keep you interested. We had some close (but safe) encounters with elephants.

The highlight of the trip was to watch a pride of 1 lion (named Grumpy by the locals) and 11 lionesses. The pride was feeding on an elephant died naturally a few days before our arrival. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/pravin_nahar/15493869208/in/album-72157649073470005/)
There were 3 young brothers who, being evicted from this pride, were trying to sneak in to have a bite or two. Their encounter with Grumpy (the leader) was something of a life-time experience for us – he managed to chase them (the 3 brothers) away one by one, making sure his pride is well looked after. The role of the lion (even though he doesn’t take part in hunting) in the pride was very obvious!!
In simple words, if you want a safari experience minus the crowd, visit Ruaha.

For my photos please copy and paste the link in your browser: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pravin_nahar/sets/72157649073470005

This park is great for its exclusivity. We would drive the whole day, without seeing nobody else. Animals are a bit more difficult to spot than in Selous Game Reserve and landscape is in general less beautiful, but we would stay there again if we'd repeat this trip, because the feeling of littleness in this enormous savanna is unique.
We've stayed in Jongomero Camp and once again, the experience was unbelievable. So exclusive, so calm.
At the en we knew that we couldn't have chosen better honeymoon destination.

See it by yourself here: https://youtu.be/tX-cdXK1kCY