Steve's Off the Beaten Track Safaris:
#2 The Wild West (Katavi & Mahale)

We’re carrying on with our series of off the beaten track safari destinations. So what cracks the nod for number two?

STEVE: It’s one which I call “The Wild West” which is Western Tanzania. I did an article for our Safari Life magazine on the one part of it. So “cruel-Tavi” is what I call it – Katavi National Park – and then “magical Mahale” which is the Mahale Mountains on Lake Tanganyika. Greystoke Mahale’s the camp. Both camps are run by Nomad, a really cool company. So those would be my next on the list. They’re pretty incredible places to go to – very different. So I don’t know if you want me to go straight ahead and tell you why.

I think why is probably the biggest question that everyone would have. Why should people go there? For those that haven’t heard of it, what makes it special?

STEVE: Because, when you’re talking about off the beaten track, this really is off the beaten track. It’s hellishly difficult to get to. You have to fly in a light aircraft flight from Arusha somewhere. I can’t even recall what the place was called, but you have to refuel on the way there, so that’s how far it is. It’s right in the south-western corner of Tanzania.
I think the reason why I’m mentioning it as a combination, if you go at the right time of year which would be August, September, October which is the end of the dry season, you get this almost contrast between the two places. Katavi, as I say, is a pretty cruel place at that time of year. It’s very, very dry; very, very barren. All the rivers dry up to the point where the Nile Crocodiles end up living in caves. It’s prehistoric. It’s Africa on steroids. You almost land there and have this feeling of your eyes going a little bit wider. I wouldn’t go so far as saying that you feel like prey, but it’s just this mind-blowingly intense place because of the lack of water at that time of year. And then the contrast then is Mahale.

Anyway, so it really is a contrast. Both places are incredibly wild and you almost get that idea that it’s a bit like combining Okavango with the Namib. It’s the same sort of feeling but it’s almost the opposite because the Namib’s spectacular – it’s got mountains and things – but the Okavango’s dead flat. Well, Katavi’s pretty much dead flat so the safari area or the dry area is dead flat and then the Mahale Mountains are obviously proper mountains. So there’s that same sort of contrast and I just love that contrast from no water to I think Lake Tanganyika’s the deepest lake in the world or second or something – I don’t know – but it’s just a contrast of places within about an hour or two’s flight away. It’s phenomenal.
You land at the airstrip in Katavi and immediately you get nailed by a swarm of what I call Messerschmitts – tsetse flies. They hand you a cow tail and you’re like, “What the hell? What’s this for?” and they almost give you a look of, “Just wait”. The camp there is a classic. It’s not basic, but a proper tented camp. If you go and look at photos of it, it’s my idea of what a safari camp should be.

Sorry, just to go back for a second, they give you this cow tail. Are they expecting you to beat your way through the tsetse flies?

STEVE: You’re basically beating yourself. You’re basically hitting yourself as hard as you can every time a tsetse fly lands. This is in pre-Rid insect repellent days but, really, the tsetse flies start at Katavi – and, in fact, there are tsetse flies at Mahale which we’ll chat about later – so you land, tsetse flies. I was probably lucky, but we had the most phenomenal guide. You know, he’s one of those “don’t judge a book by its cover” type of people. We met the guy. I can’t remember his name, unfortunately. He had teeth missing and I thought, “What’s going on here?” but I’ve never, ever, ever in my life had a guide that good. He was off-the-scale amazing. So that obviously added to the experience. So you’re in this dramatic landscape and I remember him driving along and we stopped suddenly and I went, “What?” and he said, “Fiery-necked nightjar on that branch.” Well, which branch? We were in a forested area. It turned out it took me – no word of a lie – ten minutes to find it through my binoculars, staring at the branch and the branch wasn’t two metres from the road. It was about twenty metres from the road. I went, “How the hell did you see that?” I don’t know if it’s something he’s familiar with, but he said, “No, I saw it. That branch was different.”

Well, it’s just a long flight. Difficult isn’t you need to walk for ten years to get there, but it’s a longish flight so it’s not on the traditional Tanzanian circuit. In Tanzania, you have the northern circuit which is Serengeti and Manyara and Tarangire and then you have the southern circuit which is Selous, Ruaha and those are quite close to Dar es Salaam, so people often go there but the west just isn’t on the way to anywhere else, so very few people go there but by God is it worth going to. Wow, you’ve seen it all. You’ve got to go.
Mahale, on the other hand, was completely different. The only other similarity were the tsetse flies. It was a bit disconcerting because it’s a freshwater lake obviously. You arrive at this airstrip. You’ve gone from the dry to the wet – and I’ll try and be as short as possible, but I could talk for years on this place – you arrive and you “survive” the landing in inverted commas (but not really), you get out, and then, to get to the camp, you then get on to a motorised dhow and there’d been a big storm the night before so there was a cobra or something dead in the water and there are villages and stuff just outside the park – it must be a park; I think the mountains are protected. So, having seen the elephants on the top, also very excited, then you go on this trip – I can’t remember if they gave us drinks now – but you then come around the corner and there’s Greystoke.
If you go and look at pictures of Greystoke, it’s like Robinson Crusoe. It’s just this weirdly shaped palm frond camp which is almost, for want of a better word, looks like it’s in the middle of the jungle. It looks like it’s been devoured by the jungle. And we arrived and the whole thing was chimps but, as an example, you lie on the beach. You can’t because there’s tsetse flies. I don’t know if they are seasonal or not. I went to go and get something out of the storeroom and the guy said, “Oh, be careful. There are three snakes that live in there.”

You’ve obviously given us some ideas of things people should do there. Are there any other experiences that you recommend people have?

STEVE: I think I’ve mentioned all of them, but it would be Land Rovers and walking. I think time of year for Katavi makes a difference, so go there when it’s dry and hot. Go there when it’s a little bit extreme. It’s beautiful and green in summer. I wouldn’t want to know what the tsetse flies are like in summer, but go when it’s at its “worst”. Bird. Take a great pair of binoculars because you’ll bird until you’re blue in the face. If you do go in the green season, then after November all the migrants arrive. And then, for Mahale, it’s walking. I think they’ve got kayaks. You can take kayaks out. We went snorkelling. There are some beautiful freshwater fish. Again, it was just a bit weird being bitten on my back while I was snorkelling by a tsetse fly. I didn’t really expect that. Oh, and the boat guys were also fishing while we were snorkelling and we had freshwater fish sashimi on the boat. It was amazing. Part of the experience is also that flight in between. So there’s not really an activity that they wouldn’t offer to you that you should go, “We need to do that”. So that covers all the activities.

You’ve also just mentioned binos as something that everyone should take. What else do you recommend that people take with them to make the most of the experience, for the utmost comfort and enjoyment of it?

STEVE: So all the usual safari stuff – a pair of 10x42 binoculars and kit and gear and bags and whatever – but I was thinking about it the other day and I think I would put it down to, because of the tsetse flies, definitely take anti-insect shirts like BUGTech™.
Definitely take the insect repellent, but also take the roll-on because, in the tests we’ve done – in southern Tanzania funnily enough, in Ruaha, where some camps close because the tsetse flies are so bad and they burn elephant dung in the Land Rover and the guys do everything – we did a test. We got the scientific how-to from RID™ in Australia and the roll-on Rid, Tropical Strength, for the first hour gave just about 100% protection. We’ve heard similar reports from people who have been to the Zambezi. So, to be honest, I haven’t actually tried it out myself for tsetse flies, but I’m sure I can plan a trip.
So BUGTech™ shirt, the insect repellent, and then, because walking is such a big part of the experience, I would take that new Selous Bag of ours because it’s got belt loops so it can attach to your belt or you can wear it as a backpack or you can wear it as a satchel. I would take it and wear it on my belt. Because Katavi is so hot, you want to be carrying water, so you can put a water bottle in there, your binos, your insect repellent. It’s just a very convenient bag for walking. So, for both Mahale and Katavi, I would take that Selous Bag.

RID is no longer available in the UK and EU, but we do now sell the best selling independent Australian repellent, called Bushman, which is available for our UK and EU clients to use on safari.

From above the peaks & plains.
A map showing the remote location of Katavi and Mahale in western Tanzania. We have added great images from Steve's trip and so by clicking on the blue waypoint markers, you will get to view a selection of his images.