Super User 23 September 2023

Best Travel Guide To Katavi National Park in Tanzania

Wild and remote Katavi National Park is one of Tanzania’s most unspoiled and untouched bush settings with amazing landscapes and rich wildlife. It’s a Park that’s worth exploring. There are only a couple of small, rustic safari camps, so you often come across more pride of lions than tourists on a game drive in Tanzania's third-largest National Park.

The Park is located in a remote region offering unspoiled wilderness. A predominant feature in Katavi is the enormous flood plain, split by the Katuma River and several seasonal Lakes such as Lake Katavi and Chada. The Lakes support enormous groups of hippos, crocodiles, and over 400 species of birds. One of the spectacles in Katavi is the hippos at the end of the dry season when as many as 200 try to squeeze into a pool of water. The male rivalry heats up causing territorial fights.

Location and Size In Katavi National Park :

Katavi National Park was established in 1974 and is located in Katavi Region, Tanzania. It is a very remote Park that is less frequently visited than other Tanzanian National Parks. The Park is approximately 4,471 square kilometers (1,726 sq. mi) in area, which makes it the third largest national park in Tanzania

Katavi National Park Wildlife:

There might not be the widest variety of wildlife on the average drive, but sightings tend to be spectacular, and you'll mostly have them to yourself. While lions are very common, the more remarkable sightings are buffalo herds that number in the thousands and the hippos, which are pushed into small pools as the River dries up. Pods of them share too small a place, and fights are a common sight.

Other wildlife animal features include zebras, giraffes, elephants, crocodiles, cheetahs, wild dogs, hyenas, leopards, impalas, reedbucks, wild dogs, and sable antelopes among others.

Katavi National Park Birding:

Katavi National Park is also famously known for being a bird's paradise. It is home to over 400 bird species such as herons, plovers, spoonbills, African open bills, and groups of storks including yellow-billed and saddle-billed storks, and Raptors among others.

Best Time to visit Katavi National Park

It's best to visit Katavi in the Dry season (May to October), unlike during the wetter months where you’ll have to negotiate boggy tracks. Most importantly, the drier months are when animals congregate on the floodplains to get a drink, and the thin vegetation won't shield them from your view.

Katavi National Park Accommodation:

There are good accommodation camps for visitors that operate at Katavi, including the Mbali Mbali Katavi Lodge the Foxes on the Katuma Plain, and the Chada on the Chada Plain.

Access to the Katavi National Park

By Air:

The Park is approximately a three-hour flight from Katavi to Dar es Salaam and a two-hour flight to Mwanza via a small, bush-compatible light aircraft. A flight to Arusha is similarly ~3 hours distant.

By Road:

The most direct route from Dar es Salaam is approx. 1250 km (~800 miles) and requiring 16+ hours. The parts of this entire route will be on non-tarmac roads.

Arrange and Book with Ultimate Wild Safaris for this safari tour in one of Tanzania’s remote National Parks, Katavi.

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