Overview

Southern Tanzania is home to the very large and significant wildlife reserve known as Ruaha. It’s safe to say that this is one of our absolute favorite safari locations in all of East Africa. It’s a stunningly remote and delicately beautiful location that only gets better with each visit.

For a place of this size and caliber, we estimate that the Ruaha only receives about 6000 foreign visitors annually (or about 5% of the traffic into the Serengeti), which is shockingly little.

The reserve has a real sense of wilderness, a wide variety of wildlife, twelve excellent safari camps, and a reputation for exceptionally good guiding.

The better camps here in Ruaha offer some of the best walking safari in Africa in addition to vehicle safari by day and night.

One of those places that really gets under your skin is Ruaha. People who have been returning here year after year for many years are not unusual to run into. Ruaha would undoubtedly be a strong contender if we were only permitted to take one more safari for the rest of our lives.

Ruaha was once frequently included in safari itineraries alongside places like the Serengeti or the Selous (Nyerere), but as more and more diverse areas of the reserve have opened up, we are now beginning to think of it more and more as a stand-alone destination. You could easily spend 12–14 wonderful nights in this reserve. But can you allow Ruaha to take the place of Serengeti entirely on your trip? That has emerged as the most pressing query. The answer is unquestionably yes for an increasing number of people.