Charter flight from Arusha, Dar or Kigoma. Charter private or national park motorboat from Kigoma, three to four hours. Weekly stemmer from Kigoma seven hours, then hire a local fishing boat or arrange with park HQ for pickup in park boat, another one or two hours.
Chimp tracking (allow two days), hiking camping safaris, snorkeling fish for your dinner.
Dry season (May-October) best for forest walks although no problem in the light rains of October/November.
Set deep in the heart of the African interior, inaccessible by road and only 100km (60 miles) south of where Stanley uttered that immortal greeting “Doctor Livingstone. I presume”, is a scene reminiscent of an Indian Ocean island beach idyll. Silky white coves hem in azure waters of Lake Tanganyika, overshadowed by a chain of wild, jungle-draped peaks towering almost 2km above the shore: the remote and mysterious Mahale Mountains.
The Mahale Mountains, like its northerly neighbor Gombe Stream, is home to some of Africa’s last remaining wild chimpanzee, a population of roughly 800, habituated to human visitors by a Japanese research project founded in the 1960s. Tracking the chimps of Mahale is a magical experience. The guide’s eyes pick out last night’s nests – shadowy clumps high in a gallery of trees crowding the sky. Scraps of half-eaten fruit and fresh dung become valuable clues, leading deeper into the forest. Butterflies flit in the dappled sunlight. Then suddenly you are in their midst: preening each other’s glossy coats in concentrated huddles, squabbling noisily, or bounding into the trees to swing effortlessly between the vines.
The area is also known as Nkungwe, after the park’s largest mountain, held sacred by the local Tongwe people and at 2,460 meters (8,069 ft) the highest of the six prominent points that make up the Mahale Range. And while chimpanzees are the star attraction, the slopes support a diverse forest fauna, including readily observed troops of red colobus, red-tailed and blue monkeys, and a kaleidoscopic array of colorful forest birds.
You can trace the Tongwe people’s ancient pilgrimage to the mountain spirits, hiking through the montane rainforest belt – home to an endemic race of Angola colobus monkey – to high grassy ridges chequered with alpine bamboo. Then bathe in the impossibly clear waters of the world’s largest deepest and least-polluted freshwater lake – harboring an estimated 1,000 fish species – before returning as you come, by boat.
A safari around the Other Tanzania Circuit follows a popular safari route.