Mikumi is Tanzania’s fourth-largest national park. It’s also the most accessible from Dar es Salaam. With almost guaranteed wildlife sightings, it makes an ideal safari destination for those without much time. Since the completion of the paved road connecting the park gate with Dar es Salaam, Mikumi National Park has been slated to become a hotspot for tourism in Tanzania. Located between the Uluguru Mountains and the Lumango range, Mikumi is the fourth largest national park in Tanzania and only a few hours’ drive from Tanzania’s largest city. The park has a wide variety of wildlife that can be easy spotted and also well acclimatized to game viewing. Its proximity to Dar es Salaam and the amount of wildlife that live within its borders makes Mikumi National Park a popular option for weekend visitors from the city, or for business visitors who don’t have to spend a long time on an extended safari itinerary.
How to go there
Mikumi is a four-hour drive away from Dar es Salaam and can easily be visited as a weekend get-away. However, most people visit Mikumi en route to Nyerere or Ruaha, the more popular parks in southern Tanzania. The only scheduled flights to Mikumi are with Safari Air Link which offers a daily connection to Ruaha, Selous, Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar.
Things to Do
- Wildlife
- Bird Species
- Mountains
- Game Drives
- Guided Walks
- Camping
Best Time to Visit
The best time for game viewing in Mikumi national park is in the dry season experienced in the period of June to October, in this season it is very easy to spot animals because of the thinner vegetation cover and animals gather at watering holes to drink water most especially big herds of buffaloes and elephants.
Facts about the Park
- The game viewing starts the moment the plane touches down.
- A giraffe races beside the airstrip, all legs and neck, yet oddly elegant in its awkwardness. A line of zebras parades across the runway in the giraffe’s wake.
- Second only to Katavi in its aura of untrammelled wilderness, but far more accessible, Ruaha protects a vast tract of the rugged, semi-arid bush country that characterises central Tanzania.
- Ruaha’s unusually high diversity of antelope is a function of its location, which is transitional to the acacia savannah of East Africa and the miombo woodland belt of Southern Africa.
