Tanzania’s Mahale Mountains National Park is on the shores of Lake Tanganyika and is extraordinarily beautiful.

Thanks to Jane Goodall’s pioneering research in the 1960’s wild chimpanzees are habituated to humans and guided walks offer a good chance of encountering them. Accessible only by small aircraft Mahale is one of the best locations in the world to observe chimpanzees. Primate sightings are more numerous and more prolonged than anywhere else.

Chimp tracking is the chief attraction but hike the forest paths looking for birds and butterflies, as well as the other shy mammals who quietly live there, swim in ice-cold pools up in the mountain waterfalls, take a kayak out for a dawn paddle towards the middle of the lake; drink your morning coffee there and enjoy the sunrise coming up over the mountains, go for sundowners on the old wooden dhow, lazily following the shoreline and stopping to fish along the way, or just relax on the warm sands of the beach with a drink in hand; this really is one of those Once in a Lifetime Experiences.