Mahale Mountains National Park

Mahale Mountains, bordering Lake Tanganyika, are home to some of Africa’s last remaining wild chimpanzees: a population of roughly eight hundred, habituated to human visitors by a Japanese research project founded in the 1960s. To get there you will travel by steamer from Kigoma and then on a local fishing boat.

Tracking the chimps of Mahale is a magical experience. The guide’s eyes pick out last night’s nests – shadowy clumps high in a gallery of trees crowding the sky. Scraps of half-eaten fruit and fresh dung become valuable clues, leading deeper into the forest. Butterflies flit in the dappled sunlight. Then suddenly you are in their midst: grooming each other’s glossy coats in concentrated huddles, squabbling noisily or bounding into the trees to swing effortlessly between the vines.

While chimpanzees are the star attraction, the slopes support a diverse forest fauna including easily observable troops of red colobus, red-tailed and blue monkeys and a kaleidoscopic array of colourful forest birds. The park is also home of an endemic race of Angola colobus monkey, spotted to the high grassy ridges chequered with alpine bamboo.