8 Days Katavi and Mahale Fly-In Chimpanzee Safari

Day-by-day itinerary

1. Day1
   

   Fly from Arusha to Katavi National Park

   Our team collects you from your Arusha hotel for the short drive to Arusha Airport, where the shared light aircraft to western Tanzania leaves at around 8 am. These scheduled charters run on Mondays and Thursdays, so the trip is built around those days. The plane stops to refuel at Tabora, then crosses hundreds of kilometres of miombo woodland with hardly a road in sight before landing on the grass strip in Katavi. Katavi covers about 4,471 square kilometres, making it the third largest national park in Tanzania, yet it sees very few visitors. Our guide from the camp meets you at the airstrip and drives you through the Katisunga plain, where buffalo and topi often graze close to the track. After lunch and a rest in your tent, the afternoon game drive follows the Katuma River, the lifeline of the park in the dry months. Sundowners on the plain, then dinner and overnight at Chada Katavi or Katavi Wildlife Camp.

   • Flight to Katavi
   • Chada Katavi or Katavi Wildlife Camp
   • Lunch, dinner
2. Days2–3

   Game Drives and Walks in Katavi

   Two full days are given to Katavi. Mornings start with coffee by the fire and a game drive out across the floodplains while the light is soft. As the dry season goes on, the Katuma River shrinks to a chain of muddy pools, and hundreds of hippos crowd into the remaining water; it is one of the densest gatherings of hippos in Africa, and the noise of their quarrels carries for kilometres. Buffalo herds here can number in the hundreds, and lions follow them, so a kill is a real possibility. Elephant, giraffe, zebra, eland, roan and sable antelope, crocodiles and large flocks of storks and pelicans fill the rest of the day. With a ranger and the camp guide, you can also go out on foot for two to three hours, reading tracks and moving across the plains quietly. Lunch is often a picnic under a tamarind tree, and the afternoons stay quiet in camp before a late game drive until dusk. Because so few vehicles drive here, sightings are rarely shared. Dinner and overnight at your Katavi camp each night.

   • Game drives and walks
   • Chada Katavi or Katavi Wildlife Camp
   • Breakfast, lunch, dinner
3. Day4
   

   Fly to Mahale and Boat to the Lake Tanganyika Shore

   After a final early drive or a slow breakfast, you return to the Katavi airstrip for the Thursday flight west to Mahale, a hop of well under an hour. From the small Mahale airstrip, the rest of the trip is by water: a wooden dhow carries you north along the shore for about one and a half hours. Lake Tanganyika is 673 km long and up to 1,470 m deep, and the clear water and white sand look more like a coast than a lake. Ahead, the forested Mahale Mountains rise straight from the beach to 2,462 m at Nkungwe peak. Mahale Mountains National Park covers about 1,613 square kilometres and has no roads at all; you move on foot and by boat. After settling into your thatched banda facing the lake, the afternoon is free to swim, kayak or watch the sun set over the hills of Congo on the far shore. Dinner on the sand and overnight at Greystoke Mahale or a similar lakeshore camp.

   • Flight and boat to Mahale
   • Greystoke Mahale or similar
   • Breakfast, lunch, dinner
4. Days5–7
   

   Chimpanzee Tracking in the Mahale Mountains

   These three days centre on the chimpanzees. Each morning the trackers leave early to find the M group, the community Japanese researchers from Kyoto University first habituated in the 1960s. When they radio back, you walk up into the forest with our guide; it can take 30 minutes or several hours depending on where the chimps fed and slept. Once you reach them you have one hour in their company, with no more than six visitors at a time and face masks on. In the dry months the chimps often come down close to the lakeshore, and the forest floor is open enough to follow them as they groom, hunt colobus or drum on tree roots. Having three days means you can track on two or three mornings, and the extra time leaves room for a dhow trip to fish, a forest walk to look for red colobus and the Mahale bird list of more than 350 species, or simply a quiet afternoon on the beach. Dinner and overnight at your Mahale camp each night.

   • Chimpanzee tracking
   • Greystoke Mahale or similar
   • Breakfast, lunch, dinner
5. Day8

   Boat to the Airstrip and Fly Back to Arusha

   Your last morning on the lake starts with breakfast on the beach, perhaps with one more look along the forest edge for chimps calling from the hills. Afterwards the dhow takes you back south along the shore to the Mahale airstrip, about one and a half hours of calm water if the wind is quiet. The Monday flight leaves Mahale for the return loop through Katavi and Tabora and reaches Arusha around 6 pm. On the way you look down on the same miombo woodland you crossed a week before, now with names and stories attached. In Arusha our team meets you at the airport and transfers you to your hotel or onward connection. Many travellers add a few nights in the Serengeti or on Zanzibar before flying home, and the Arusha arrival time leaves room for an evening flight from Kilimanjaro International Airport, about an hour away by road, if you plan to fly out the same night. End of the safari.

   • Flight back to Arusha
   • Breakfast, lunch