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We have the option to be in Tanzania for safari around the Northern circuit in either late April (long rains) or early August (high season). My husband and I are currently debating which will be better. So far the lists of pros and cons for the rainy season are.

Pros: Lush, green, lots of wildlife in southern serengeti, few crowds
Cons: Likely to get stuck in the mud, wet all the time, sleeping in heavy rain, increased driving times due to previously mentioned getting stuck in the mud.

The main draw card for the wet season is the lack of crowds, but I would love an opinion from someone who has been there as to how bad the rain is vs how bad the crowds are in high season.

Thanks.

Aside from being stuck in the mud most of the time you will see very little animals. The reason people go during the dry season is that animals congregate around watering holes making them easier to see.

The serengeti/Masai Mara is very large. We entered through the West Gate and exited through the south then up through the Ngororgogo crater. There were many hours (5-8hours) of rough riding with no animals in sight.

If crowd avoidance is your main goal, Look into some of the other parks (Katavi, Mahale, Ruaha (if you can brave the teste fly)), because you will have crowds onces you hit the herds and the Ngorogoro crater whether you want them or not. They are premire Afican destinations.

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m being stuck in the mud most of the time you will see very little animals. The reason people go during the dry season is that animals congregate around watering holes making them easier to see.

The serengeti/Masai Mara is very large. We entered through the West Gate and exited through the south then up through the Ngororgogo crater. There were many hours (5-8hours) of rough riding with no animals in sight.

If crowd avoida

I definitely second Slip's post. Though I have no experience with either rainy season safari or the north circuit crowds, our visit itinerary was very much shaped by the same concerns as yours.

Our original plan was to climb Kili and visit Ngorngoro and Serengeti. Then, we came across a NationalGeographic image from a safari in Serengeti, with a shot of a traffic jam around some poor animal. It looked something like the image below:
http://lipiadventure.com/pages/itinerary_offtrack.html

A coworker told me that she had dreamt of Ngorngoro for 15 years of her life. When she got there in 2006, the animal chasing with jeep densities approaching impala herd concentrations, left her disappointed and sad for the park. She returned with a very unpleasant aftertaste. This is a person who has taught in South Africa for half a year, has been to Kenya, Namibia, South Africa and Tanzania safaris on separate visits to Africa. The crowds in Serengeti and Ngorngoro ruined the Tanzania trip for her.

These thoughts depressed us, for we knew that the crowds would affect us and interfere with our experience of the safari. We didn't want car drivers being radio-notified about a cheetah sighting and racing with 40 other SUVs to the sight. We prefer to see fewer animals, but wanted walking safaris, wanted to just sit quietly and look onto a plain, as giraffes and elephants walk across it. We did not want to spend our time in Africa racing around in a car, competing with other visitors.

The answer for us was Katavi/Mahale. Hussein Mgungah, the person who helped us organize this, after a decade in the parks of Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda, was blown away himself. I have seen him, sitting pensively, for hours, just looking out onto the plains in front of our camping spot, mesmerised. He confessed that he had never experienced a safari like Katavi. And if in Katavi we did spot another jeep or two on some days, in Mahale, we almost felt like we were alone in the park.

Hussein told me that in Masai Mara and Serengeti, depending on the season, you might drive 40 minutes without spotting an animal. That's why all the drivers communicate with each other. He said that an average game drive in Safari was 40-50 miles. Our game drives in Katavi averaged 2-3 miles because of the animal density. Several times, we skipped the game drives because we could see no less just by sitting on the river bank next to our tents.

The answer to avoiding the crowds, just as Slip writes, is not to travel during rainy bad time, but to choose a different park. Yes, it will take an extra day of travel to get to these parks, but it's so worth it. And the extra travel is part of the experience. The bonus is that by going so out of the established tourist circle, you get to see real Tanzanians. Many people warned me before the trip that the locals would see us as walking dollars, not real people. Nothing was further from the truth in western Tanzania. People came up to us, asking us to take pictures. Though most didn't speak English, the ones who did were delighted to chat with us, for no reason other than chatting. We got a glimpse of the people and their culture that is pretty much impossible to glean in the Northern Circuit.

Best,

newyorklenny

PS My wife and I chose the itinerary and with the godly help of Hussein visited these amazing parks. Still, as the organizer, deep inside, I kept wondering whether skipping Serengeti/Masai Mara, I had missed the "Africa Experience". One of the people in my group, has since returned to east Africa with his friends. They had visited every single park in Kenya, and he told me that nothing compared to the density of animals in Katavi.

Thanks both for your replies. We are planning to visit other parks whilst we are in Africa, but are wondering whether we will miss something by skipping Serengeti and Ngorongoro. You have however given my food for thought - that photo is a terrifying thought, and something I can gladly live without seeing. I will start investigating some of the other parks you suggest - time is not the issue, but money is.

Just started looking at Katavi.... and I'm there!!

It looks amazing, I'm totally convinced. Thank you very much for the info.

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It looks amazing, I'm totally convinced. Thank you very much for the in

Hi,

We flipped through LonelyPlanet, and Katavi just popped out as THE PARK for a safari. Then, while doing internet searches, I came across Katavi description ATR (africa travel resource) web site. For some reason, they have taken down their safari guides, but the web site was amazing, and here is google cache of that page, just without the pictures. This page sealed it for us, and visiting Katavi/Mahale became an obsession for us.
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:0N48cb9L66AJ:www.a...n&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:bAlTRDESek4J:www.a...n&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

Here's my report on the parks for bootsnall:
http://www.bootsnall.com/articles/07-07/why-i-should-ke...tanzania-africa.html

If you visit just Katavi, even with the extra costs of getting to the parks, you can do it on the same budget as visiting Serengeti. This is because of the park fees.
http://www.tanzaniaparks.com/regulation.htm
As you can see, Katavi entry fee is $20/person/day, but Serengeti is $50/person/day. Also, Ngorngoro (not listed on the above page because it's Conservation Area, not managed by the NationalPark authority) is even more expensive than Serengeti with $250 car entrance fee on top of per/person fees.

So, 7 days in Katavi - you save $210 per person on the park fees. That can cover the costs of getting to Katavi. If you can get a group (if not friends/relatives as I did, try posting on travel forums to get a company), you can add Mahale to the trip for a reasonable cost.

We are currently $70,000 in educational debts, and with my academic graduate stipend, we aren't getting out of the loans any time soon. It did feel a bit insane to go to Tanzania for a month - we spent $8000 for the two of us on all the NewYork-Tanzania flights, safaris and Zanzibar/Chumbe. Yes, insane. But we knew that taking a month like this may be a unique opportunity for us. We knew that with all the costs of doing Africa, maybe we could cut out Mahale and spend $3000 on the month for each of us instead of $4000. But over the long run, over the lifetime, the saving of $2000 at the cost of not seeing Mahale chimps and sailing on Liemba - in retrospect that would have been the worse financial decision of our life.

Any ideas on how get around in the park? We will be travelling up from Malawi, so from Mbeya I've found info on buses to get us to the park gates but not how we explore once there. The $500 a night tented camps are out of the budget, but there appears to be campsites for well within the budget. Does anyone run budget camping safaris in the park? Or can we hire a car somewhere and then hire a guide once we get to the park?

There are very nice guesthouses in Katavi at $20/night, while camping in your own tent is $30/night. The guesthouses have showers, electricity, little fridge for food. We spent half the time at the guesthouse and half the time camping at a hippo pool in a different area of the park.

For the game drives you definitely need a car and a driver. Supposedly, you can get a car in the village of Sitalike, right outside of the park. But we've walked around that village, and how you'd arrange for a car there is far from obvious.

My suggestion would be to ask Hussein (hussein@lipiadventure.com) to arrange the car for you while in Katavi. He has been to Mahale and Katavi many times now and has contacts. Finding out anything via e-mail is impossible, as I have found out. He might even be able to get the park itself to take you on game drives in the area.

The ranger is $20/day for the group, and you definitely want one, especially if you're camping in the wild. Even at the banda/guesthouse, if you want to come out after sunset, you need the armed ranger to accompany you. The animals are everywhere there.