For the past week, I have been working my way westward, following an itinerary commonly known as Tanzania’s Southern Circuit; great swaths of stunning wilderness spread across the southern part of the country. The largest of its national parks are located here, teaming with game. Yet, due to the lack of tourism infrastructure, it is a place that most of the three quarter of a million yearly visitors to Tanzania never see.
The end of the road
“This doesn’t look good!”
Now I have reached the end of the road, literally. Katavi is the third largest park in Tanzania, and a place so remote that it only receives a handful of visitors per year. The Cessna that brought me here only comes twice a week. As for road travel, don’t even ask.
My guide meets me at the airstrip and introduces himself as Apollo. “We need to stop in town to pick up a few things,” he informs me as he heaves my duffle bag into the open land cruiser. Town turns out to be a cluster of shacks lined up along a sun-baked red dirt road. Apollo vanishes and I sit in the cruiser, glad for this rare opportunity to take in a glimpse of rural African life. A few men are crouched by the side of an eighteen-wheeler, looking quizzically at one of the tires; a woman cleans a large catfish in a plastic bucket. They pretend not to notice me while I furtively snap a few pictures. I know it’s bad etiquette but I can’t resist.
Into Eden
Elephants stomp into the underbrush.
We careen down the road in a mist of red dust, Apollo and I, and two camp staff who have by now joined us, until we turn into a spongy track under an arch of dense foliage. A barely visible sign informs me that we have entered the park. It’s the start of the wet season. There are elephants, zebras and giraffes everywhere, gorging on tender new shoots. “You are one of only three guests,” Apollo mentions casually, as we finally emerge at the edge of the flood plain. I take it to mean at the camp, but it turns out to be in the entire park. And so it is that I enter my personal Eden, the Katavi Wilderness Camp.
Primeval paradise
The Lyamba-Iya-Mfina escarpment borders the flood plain.
This is Africa at its pristine best, rich in game and birds going about the rhythm of their existence just as they have for millennia, and mine alone. On the first morning, I wake up to find a herd of usually elusive elands grazing beneath my deck. My tent is a comfortable canvas bungalow under a thatched roof (and with modern plumbing). It is raised on a wooden platform overlooking the undulating expense of the reed-filled Katisuna plain and the misty outline of the Lyamba-Iya-Mfipa escarpment beyond. I could sit here all day. But Apollo awaits, eager to shown me crowned cranes dancing their mating dance in the morning sun, prides of lions lounging in the reeds, journeys of giraffes strutting across the plain and birds galore. For a few magical days, I experience what Eden must have been, before apples and serpents.
A Few Souvenirs
