 Mikumi National Park makes up, along with Ruaha National Park, Selous Game Reserve and Udzungwa Mountains National Park the ‘southern safari circuit’ in Tanzania. The park is the fourth largest in Tanzania, being 3,240 sq km (1,242 sq miles) in size.
The well surfaced Tanzam highway, which links Zambia with Tanzania, and in particular Dar-es-Salaam, runs for 50km (31 miles) through the middle of Mikumi National Park. This makes the park the most accessible in Tanzania being
290km (183 miles) from Dar-es-Salaam.
Mikumi National Park takes its name from the elegantly thin Mikumi or more commonly named Borassus palm trees, which are found in the park. The extensive Mkata River flood plain forms the main part of the park which is flanked by an arc of wooded mountains stretching from the Uluguru mountains in the north to the Udzungwa mountains in the south.
The park is similar to the Serengeti, being mainly flat, open grassland with the occasional baobob and Borassus palm tree and patches of acacia woodland. This makes the park ideal for game viewing.
Mikumi National Park has a wide variety of animals including elephants, giraffe, zebra, lions, leopard, African wild dogs, hippopotamus, crocodiles, jackel, warthogs, impala, yellow baboons, ‘velvet monkeys’, buffalo, waterbuck and spotted hyena. There are also over 400 species of birds.
We consider Mikumi National Park to be an ideal safari destination either in its own right, especially for guests staying in Dar-es-Salaam and/or Zanzibar or for those travelling by road to Ruaha National Park and/or Iringa. For guests using the park as their one safari experience, we recommend a stay of 2-4 nights. Where guests combine the park with Ruaha National Park and /or Selous Game Reserve we recommend 1-3 nights. A one night stay enables guests to experience two game drives, in the afternoon and morning, if they are moving onto either Iringa or Dar-es-Salaam. A day can be spent at Udzungwa Mountains National Park for those guests staying 2 or more nights.
The accommodation we use in Mikumi National Park is Vuma Hills Tented Camp.
Mikumi National Park is open all year, even through the rainy season from March to June, when most of the park’s dirt tracks/roads are passable. |
