Katavi National Park

Less well travelled than Tanzania's more iconic parks, Katavi National Park is a truly wild experience for those wanting to get off the beaten track.

Katavi is home to the Katuma River and the floodplains that it spawns each wet season, but it is in the dry season that the best game viewing experiences can be had as thousands of elephants, buffalo, zebras, and giraffe gather around the rapidly drying streams in search of water.

The predators – from the park's huge number of crocodiles to leopards & lions – have a field day during the dry season, and it's a fantastic opportunity to see the predator prey dynamic in action.

The park's huge numbers of hippopotamus are also a spectacle to behold in the dry season, as territorial males engage in bloody fights to decide who dominates the rapidly dwindling pools.