Africa's largest national park and most underrated wildlife destination — Tanzania's secret, where the elephant herds of 12,000 animals and the wild dog packs outnumber the visitors by a factor that has never applied to the Serengeti
Ruaha National Park (20,226 sq km — the largest national park in Tanzania and one of the largest in Africa, in the heart of the Southern Highlands of Tanzania, accessible by light aircraft from Dar es Salaam or Arusha, approximately 1.5 hours) is the African safari destination most frequently described by professional guides and wildlife photographers as 'what the Serengeti was like thirty years ago': a vast, semi-arid woodland (the miombo woodland — Brachystegia and Julbernardia species, the dominant forest type of the central African plateau, extending from Tanzania through Zambia into Zimb…
The Ruaha area's human history is dominated by the Hehe people (the Bantu-speaking warrior kingdom of the Iringa highlands — the Hehe Chief Mkwawa (Munyigumba Mwamuyinga, reigned 1879-1898) led the most successful African resistance to German colonial expansion in East Africa: the Hehe defeated a German military column of 360 men at the Battle of Lugalo in 1891, the most decisive African military victory over a European force in East African colonial history, killing the German commander Emil von Zelewski and more than half his troops). Chief Mkwawa's skull (taken by the Germans after his dea…