The end of the Tanzanian railway line — Lake Tanganyika, Gombe chimps, and a genuine edge-of-the-map feeling
Kigoma on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika is as remote as a Tanzanian city gets — reached by an overnight train through the interior from Dar es Salaam or by small aircraft. The lake it sits on is extraordinary: the world's second-deepest (1,470m), second-largest by volume, and second-oldest (over 9 million years), with endemic species of fish and invertebrates found nowhere else on Earth. Gombe Stream National Park, 16km north by boat, is where Jane Goodall began her chimpanzee research in 1960 and still operates — one of the world's most scientifically significant wildlife sites and a…
Kigoma's position at the terminus of the Central Line railway — built by German colonial engineers between 1905 and 1914 — made it a significant colonial administrative and trading centre. The region was German East Africa until WWI, then British Tanganyika after the war. The Arab slave trade from Central Africa passed through this area for centuries; Ujiji was a major slave market. The meeting of Stanley and Livingstone — whatever was actually said — took place in Ujiji in 1871, in the midst of Livingstone's final expeditions. The monument is a modest memorial that belies the historical weig…