Introduction
Manyara holds the two parks every northern-circuit safari passes through and few of them stay in: Tarangire, with the densest dry-season elephant concentration in Tanzania, and Lake Manyara, a narrow strip of forest, lake and Rift Valley escarpment. Both are usually given an afternoon. Both are better than that.
Overview
The road west from Arusha crosses this region, and the standard itinerary treats it as the warm-up: a few hours in Tarangire, a stop at Lake Manyara if there is time, then on to the crater and the Serengeti. It is an understandable shape and it undersells the place. Tarangire's dry season, roughly June through October, concentrates enormous numbers of elephant along its river when the surrounding country dries out, in a landscape of baobabs and open woodland that photographs quite unlike the Serengeti's plains — and the park is uncrowded precisely because the vehicles have gone north. Lake Manyara is small and thin, wedged between a soda lake and the wall of the Rift Valley escarpment, and packs groundwater forest, hippo pools, flamingo and a famous escarpment view into a park you can drive in half a day. Above and behind them, the escarpment itself and the villages along it are the region's other half, with cultural walks, waterfalls and the Rift's edge dropping several hundred metres to the lake floor. A night here rather than a lunch stop changes the northern circuit's first day from a transfer into a destination, and it is the cheapest upgrade available on a Tanzanian safari.
Discover Manyara
Tarangire's defining feature is water in a dry country. The Tarangire river runs through it year-round, and as the surrounding land dries out through the long dry season the animals come to it in numbers that are genuinely startling — elephant above all, in herds that gather along the riverbed in concentrations unmatched anywhere else in Tanzania, along with buffalo, zebra, wildebeest and the predators that follow them. The landscape is its own argument too: open woodland studded with enormous baobabs, termite mounds the size of cars, and long views that photograph completely differently from the Serengeti's grassland. This is a seasonal park in a way the crater is not. Come between roughly June and October and it is one of the best game-viewing experiences in the country; come in the green months and the animals disperse across a much wider area and the park feels empty. That seasonal movement is Tarangire's own, driven by local water rather than by the great herds — it is a separate and much smaller phenomenon from the one described in the migration guide, and conflating the two is a common source of confused expectations.
Ways to Experience This Destination
Tarangire's river concentration from roughly June to October — the densest elephant gathering in the country, in an uncrowded park.
Open woodland studded with enormous baobabs and termite mounds, photographing quite unlike the Serengeti's plains.
Lake Manyara's spring-fed forest of fig and mahogany, blue monkeys and baboons, opening onto hippo pools and flamingo.
The wall of the Rift Valley above the lake, with the region's signature view and villages, farms and waterfalls along its edge.
Frequently asked questions
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