Mahale National Park
Mahale Mountains National Park is an idyllic lost world; few other people ever see the magical forest, mountain waterfalls, and the gin-clear lake.
A chimpanzee paradise, where fantasy mountains and forests rise out of Lake Tanganyika.
Life here is a hedonistic wilderness cocktail. In the forest, as well as a completely wild-living, but habituated group of chimpanzees, live nine other species of primate, leopards and a host of shy forest creatures. Around them, streams are strung with vines, ripening fruit and jasmine flowers. By the beaches, with tropical fish around them like butterflies, hippopotami bob in its clear waters.
Our journey to this far-flung Garden of Eden is by boat on a cobalt blue lake, stretching 500 miles north to south and a mile below. As the fishing villages thin out and mountains rise, you begin to sense how much you've left behind. Time slows down in the silence of no roads for a hundred miles. The beauty is irrepressible. We’ve seen hunting dog on these beaches, bushbuck, even the pennant-winged night-jar. Tucked along Lake Tanganyika’s remote shoreline lies Greystoke, a Safari lodge like no other.
Greystoke
Chada
Charlie, Ugalla
Camps in Mahale Mountains
In the field with Nomad
The Mahale Mountains National Park is all about the time you spend searching for the chimpanzees. You’re walking in the forested mountains, listening for their calls, knowing they are somewhere above you, moving through the trees. When you finally find them, it is always special — no matter how many times you’ve done it.
From mid-July onwards is usually best, depending on where the fruit is and where the chimps decide to feed. Some days the walk is short; other days it pushes you, but that’s part of the experience. What means the most to me is that I know each chimp by its voice, its behaviour, and its personality — they are my cousins. Mahale feels part Robinson Crusoe, part David Attenborough, and there is nowhere else in the world I would rather be.
Butati Nyundo
Greystoke, Mahale Mountains, Western Tanzania
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