Ruaha National Park is a park where your Tanzania Safari can begin the moment the plane touches down. A pair of giraffe may race beside the airstrip, with a line of zebra parading across the runway in their wake as nearby protective elephant mothers guard their young under the shade of a baobab tree.

Tanzania’s second-largest national park after the Serengeti, Ruaha National Park is a remote bastion of spectacular wilderness, undisturbed wildlife, and breathtaking scenery. With herds of more than 10,000 elephants, vast concentrations of buffalo, gazelle, and over 400 bird species, Ruaha’s limitless wilderness, together with the surrounding game reserves of Rungwa and Kisigo -- stretches over 40,000 square kilometres.

Wildlife in Ruaha is concentrated along the great Ruaha River that is the park’s lifeblood. The river is a flooded torrent after the rains, dwindling to a few precious pools of water surrounded by a sweep of sand in the dry season. Waterbuck, impala and the world’s most southerly Grant’s gazelle risk their lives for a sip of water – the shores of the Ruaha are a permanent hunting ground for lion, leopard, jackal, hyena and the rare and endangered African Wild Dog. Ruaha’s 8,000 elephants are recovering strongly from ivory poaching during the 1980s and remain the largest population in East Africa.

Boating safaris are starting to gain in popularity, and provide a popular alternative to viewing the area by car.

Ruaha is the only protected area in which the flora and fauna of eastern and southern Africa overlap, leading to fascinating combinations of wildlife – both greater and lesser kudu live here, as do sable and roan antelopes.