Far from the tourist hordes, Ruaha is untamed Africa at its finest: an epic expanse of remote and rugged bush dotted with rocky kopjes and baobabs. The park is Tanzania’s second largest, but sees only a fraction of the visitors who descend on the Serengeti. Lodges are few and sometimes far between, making for genuinely intimate wildlife sightings and a true wilderness feel.
Straddling the transition zone between Africa’s eastern and southern biomes, Ruaha features a varied landscape of forested hills, open plains, riverine forests, miombo woodland and granite peaks. Lifeblood of the park is the Great Ruaha River, which flows strongly during the rains but reduces to a trickle by the end of the dry, when it serves as a magnet for wildlife.