Within Mkomazi National Park sits Mkomazi Wilderness Retreat, a luxury camp where animals drink from the big waterhole below and guests can visit the rhino sanctuary or go on game drives. It’s set within 3,000 square kilometers of grey-green flowering plants, ancient baobab trees, and rocky hills scattered with grasslands and Acacia forests. 

You won’t have much competition to see the sights or stay at the park’s highly reviewed property –– not many tourists come to this tranquil spot. But recent visitors have reported that beautiful rooms, great views, nice people, and delicious food await. It was “my favorite property of my entire safari!” said one Facebook review. 

This makes Mkomazi a perfect off-the-beaten-path diversion from a busy Northern Tanzania tour or exhausting trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. 

Spend a few nights relaxing in one of Mkomazi Wilderness Retreat’s seven comfortable solar-powered tents nestled in the camp above the Dindira plains. These stylish dwellings are made from local materials and offer walk-in bathrooms with rain showers. Above them sits an open restaurant, bar, and private viewpoint that looks over the Pare Mountains and beyond Mount Kilimanjaro. 

Costs range from $330-390 USD per night. Meals are included, with some ingredients grown in the camp’s organic farm. Many of the retreat’s reviews rave about the talent of its chef while complimenting the rest of its friendly and knowledge staff. Guests love the location and rustic vibe of the property, which they didn’t even have to leave to spot herds of buffalo, giraffe, and elephants.

“Mkomazi Wilderness Retreat and the whole national park felt as if it were our own private world, which is incredibly rare and even more special,” a reviewer wrote on Tripadvisor.

The park is considered a conservation success story after it rebounded within the last three decades into healthy wilderness teeming with birds, elephants, and ungulates. Elephants had almost disappeared but are now back in large numbers. 

Mkomazi is the only national park in Tanzania where visitors can see all the rare antelope species of the Sahel Biosphere, including the lesser kudu, gerenuk and beisa oryx. It shares a border to the north with Kenya’s Tsavo National Park, offering a hospitable environment for migrating herds of elephant, oryx, and zebra during the wet season.

Those enthusiastic about birding can delight in more than 400 recorded species, including raptors and ground birds. Spot the Vulturine guineafowl, found only in Mkomazi in Tanzania. Mkomazi National Park is also known as Tanzania’s “Home of the Black Rhino,” where guests can support the endangered mammals by visiting the rhino sanctuaries, Mbula and Kisima.

For more information about conservation efforts in Mkomazi National Park, check out The Mkomazi Project at WildlifeNOW: https://wildlifenow.com/what-we-do/ecosystem-preservation/the-mkomazi-project/