Tarangire

Tarangire National Park

Situated in Tanzania’s Manyara Region, just southeast of Lake Manyara National Park, Tarangire is just over 100km from the city of Arusha. This makes it easily accessible for travellers en route to the Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Conservation Area, situated further west. The national park extends over 2,850km2 (280,500 hectares), but the land available to wildlife is expanded by Game Controlled Areas, conservancies, and the Tarangire Conservation Area. Here, people and wildlife exist side-by-side. Several luxury lodges operate in these concessions on the park’s fringes, allowing their guests to experience both the park and the increased freedom away from its confines – by offering night drives, for example.

From the Tarangire River in the north, rolling hills give way to vast swamps. These soak up the rain like sponges and maintain a tinge of green, even during the dry season. Away from the watery marshlands, the landscape is dotted with granitic ridges, red-earth termite mounds and sparse whistling thorn (Vachellia drepanolobium) woodlands. Throughout, bulbous baobabs (Adansonia digitata) impose themselves upon the backdrop, dwarfing even the enormous herds of elephants that forage around them.