Lake Eyasi

Though not really a game destination, Lake Eyasi, just south of the Serengeti, is a wild, scenically stunning area where you can get a real insight into the way of life of some of Tanzania's fascintaing tribes, most notably the Wahadzabe and Datoga peoples

 

Lake Eyasi is about ninety miles to the south west of Arusha. It's a drive of around five hours or a flight of about forty minutes. The road is the same one that you take to get to the Ngorongoro Crater and Highlands, but divides in Karatu, just below the Crater rim. The north-eastern tip of the lake lies in the shadow of Ol Deani Mountain on the edge of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Lake Eyasi lies in one of the oldest parts of the Eastern Rift Valley, it runs northeast - southwest for a distance of about fifty miles below the impressive three thousand foot escarpment, which forms the south-eastern boundary of the Serengeti National Park and Maswa game reserve. To the southeast of the lake is the Yaida valley, home to the Wahadzabe tribe of hunter-gatherers.

This area is not within a national park and is not about high impact game viewing, but there is great birdlife along the lake shore and the location alone makes it a great place to spend a couple of nights, either at the beginning or end of a walking safari from or to Ngorongoro. For walking safaris we use a luxury mobile tented camp on the lake shore or Kisima Ngeda Tented Camp as a base from which to walk up to or down from Ol Deani and the Ngorongoro Highlands.