Mikumi National Park

Mikumi covers 3,230 square kilometers in the Morogoro Region, sitting between the Uluguru and Rubeho mountain ranges. It is Tanzania’s fourth-largest national park and the easiest southern park to reach from Dar es Salaam. The A7 highway runs straight through it. That same road gives you your first wildlife sightings before you even reach the gate.

The heart of the park is the Mkata Floodplain. It looks like a smaller Serengeti, open grassland running to distant hills with animals spread across it throughout the day. Large herds of zebra, wildebeest, buffalo, and elephant are common on the plain. Lions are seen regularly on the termite mounds and floodplain edges. Mikumi is also one of the better parks in Tanzania for seeing giraffe, with a resident population of the Masai subspecies found throughout the park.

Mikumi connects directly to Nyerere National Park to the south, forming part of an ecosystem covering over 75,000 square kilometers. The park does not offer walking safaris inside its boundaries, but game drives produce strong results year-round. Because visitor numbers are low compared to the northern parks, you will rarely share a sighting with another vehicle.

Honest note: Mikumi is not the right park if you want walking safaris or boat safaris. Those are available at Nyerere, which we can combine into the same trip. If you have two or three days and you are based in Dar or Zanzibar, Mikumi is hard to beat for value and ease of access.