Tanzania





Mahale Mountains National Park


The setting might have been transplanted from an uninhabited Indian Ocean island: soft, sandy beaches lapped by the transparent turquoise waters of the world’s longest and least polluted lake, all set below a backdrop of swaying palms, sweaty jungle and steep slopes rising to the wild 2,460m Mt Nkungwe.

But the few tourists who manage to reach this remote and mysterious park on Lake Tanganyika are seldom there for the scenery. Mahale Mountains, a full 30 times larger than its northerly neighbour Gombe Stream, is home to almost 1,000 wild chimpanzees, which have been habituated to human visitors by a Japanese research project founded in the 1960s. And while chimpanzees are the star attraction, the forested slopes also support several species of monkey and a kaleidoscopic array of colourful forest birds, making Mahale one of East Africa’s most alluring off-the-beaten-track wildlife sanctuaries.


 



Vegetation and habitats

Wildlife

Activities

Getting there

Where to stay





Vegetation and habitats






Wildlife


 






Activities





Getting there





Where to stay



Checklist of conspicuous and noteworthy mammals: bushbuck, warthog, common chimpanzee, yellow baboon, blue monkey, red-tailed monkey, vervet monkey, red colobus, Angola pied colobus, giant forest squirrel.