Chimpanzee Trekking

Tanzania is one of only a handful of countries in the world where it is possible to trek through forest and sit within metres of wild chimpanzees — our closest living relatives, sharing approximately 98.7% of our DNA. The experience is unlike any other wildlife encounter in Africa: chimpanzees are not the passive, distant subjects of a plains game drive. They are loud, fast, socially complex, and intensely expressive, moving through the forest canopy with an athleticism that is breathtaking to watch, communicating with vocalisations that range from intimate murmurs to the hair-raising full-community chorus of the pant-hoot call that can be heard kilometres away. Looking into the face of a wild chimpanzee and meeting an intelligence that is recognisably, uncomfortably close to human is a moment that stays with you permanently.

Tanzania’s two primary chimpanzee trekking destinations offer very different experiences. Gombe Stream National Park — made famous by Jane Goodall’s decades of research — is small, accessible by boat from Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika, and offers the most habituated and reliably encountered chimpanzee community in Africa. Mahale Mountains National Park, further south along the lake shore and accessible only by light aircraft or a long boat journey, is more remote, more physically demanding, and set in a forest of extraordinary beauty that rises from the lakeshore to mist-covered peaks. Mahale is for the traveller who wants the chimpanzee experience combined with genuine wilderness adventure — the combination of great apes, mountain forest, and the deep clear waters of Lake Tanganyika creates an itinerary that is entirely unlike anything else in East African travel.