- Info
- More Info
- Images
Encompassing Lake Katavi, the Katuma River and picturesque Lake Chala, Katavi National Park stretches across roughly 4500 square kilometres of Tanzanian woods and wetlands. It boasts a wide array of bird and animal life, including leopard, elephant, zebra, buffalo, lion and the densest hippo and croc populations in the country.
Katavi National Park in the far west of Tanzania is somewhere that, even today, few
people have been lucky enough to visit. Perhaps because of this, it feels
untouched, almost like travelling back in time. The park centers on a series of wide
flood plains, blond with waist high grass in the early dry season, green and
flooded like a mini Okavango Delta after the rains. Connecting the main flood
plains – Ngolema, Katisunga, Katavi and Chada - is a network of fragile seasonal
rivers. It is these rivers that form the focus of the game viewing for which Katavi is
renowned during the dry season.
Water rapidly becomes a limited resource in Katavi during the dry so animals of all
kinds are drawn to the Katuma, Kavu and Kapapa Rivers. Hippo in their thousands
cram the remaining pools, crocodiles retire to caves in the mud walls of the river
banks, buffalo and elephant are drawn to the rivers to drink. The lion, hyenas and
other predators know this. In the late dry season, there are few places that offer
such a raw and wild experience as Katavi.
The rains usually come mid November and go through until early June. Katavi then
undergoes a complete transformation. Almost as soon as the first rains hit the
ground, everything goes green; long green and lush grasses sprout from what
was just dry and cracked earth. The rivers flow again, the pools overflow and there
is space for all. It's a birders paradise as all the migratory birds flock back. Grass
as high as an elephant's eye, but there is still so much to see.
