Tanzania’s most underrated safari destination, Katavi comes as close as any park to evoking Africa as it must have been 100 years ago.
Tanzania’s third-largest national park, little-known Katavi extends across 4,470 square kilometres of the remote Rukwa Valley, an easterly extension of the Albertine Rift. Though dominated by dense Brachystegia woodland, its most important features in terms of game viewing are the seasonal Katuma and Kapapa Rivers and the open floodplains that flank them.
In the dry season, when the floodwaters retreat, these grassy plains support plenty of lions and elephants, a few thousand-strong buffalo herds and a diversity of other plains species such as zebra, giraffe, hartebeest, topi, impala, reedbuck and Defassa waterbuck.