Katavi
- Jan Dehn
- Jul 8
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 10
The impala bounds at full tilt from the tree line with a pack of African wild dogs in pursuit. They cross the narrow flood plain in seconds. Ahead there is only river. The impala hesitates. The dogs do not. The impala leaps into the water, the dogs at the edge, yipping and jumping on their forelegs. Only an instant. A crocodile locks onto the impala’s legs, drags it in. The last thing to go under is the impala’s mouth, wide open as if in a scream.
This happened today.
In Katavi.
–––––
Savannah rainfall rather than reliable mountain run-off provides the water that flows through the Katuma River and onto the Chada plain in Katavi. Dependence on rainfall makes life in Katavi seasonal in the extreme.
The rains start in November. The river swells and breaks its banks and spills out across enormous flatlands. The park’s few camps and lodges close shop and six months pass before the waters have ebbed enough for business to resume.
When the park re-opens in June starts of one of the most dramatic transformations you will experience in any national park in Africa: Katavi’s metamorphosis from heaven to hell in just six months.
As I pen these words in July, the river has pulled back from the plains, but still runs full. This is Katavi at its most benign. As you drive along dirt roads that track the meandering river, time and time again you find yourself mesmerized by impossibly lush landscapes and an insane abundance of life, like Africa before modernity.
Unlike the Mara and Ruaha rivers with their tall steep banks, the Katuma has almost none. The river seems to blend seamlessly into surrounding flood plains, which are green with short grass on black soil riddled with footprints of countless animals that come to the river to drink.
Katavi in July is beautiful, inviting you to pull onto the side of the road by a bend in the river, kill the engine, and take in the scenery.
Nearby, elephants with big tusks, grey backs, and bellies black from recent river crossings stretch for tamarind with trunks extended.
On the opposite bank, buffalos, black and menacing, stare you down, their mistrustful eyes set wide apart beneath thick and heavy horns.
Katavi bushbuck female, reedbuck, and bushbuck male (Source: own photos)
Unusually large numbers beautiful bushbucks cautiously approach the river, even the occasional reedbuck.
There are also many giraffes, which delicately remove leaves from the tops of Acacias, while vervet monkeys in big batches and many babies criss-cross the open spaces between trees in search of morsels.
On the sandy river banks, lie dozens of crocodiles, often mere feet apart, the young still yellow and green, the old nearly black with melanin. Some open their mouths to cool their bodies as the sun rises in the sky.
Crocodiles are everywhere (Source: own photos)
Shoals of Night Herons sit among the crocs, fearless of the big reptiles, but easily shocked into flight when African Fish Eagles swoop down from the nearby trees to discourage competition.
Everywhere, literally everywhere, there are waterbirds in almost impossible numbers. Saddle-billed storks, open-billed Storks, hamerkops, grey herons, goliath herons, great egrets, cattle egrets, and pied kingfishers are particularly abundant. Egyptian and spur-winged geese are plentiful too. Even the odd crested crane can be found here. And I have never seen so many yellow-billed storks in my life.
Waterbirds galore (Source: own photos)
More waterbirds (Source: own photos)
In the middle of the brown river, the star attraction, in great numbers, grunting, playing, rolling, farting, jostling, and frolicking, the hippos, which more than any other animal define Katavi.
Hippos of Katavi (Source: own photos)
More than any other animal, the hippo shapes Katavi’s riverine landscape. Hippo highways – deep groves in the soil – emanate from the river like veins on a leaf. The hippos have notoriously poor eye sight, so they use the same paths every night to reach the grasslands beyond until they have become deep water-filled canals.
But there is only enough water in the Katuma for all these territorial beasts in early season. Many hippos have made homes in the hippo highways, but they will all dry up soon. It is easy to imagine, even this early, how the coming drought will spell big trouble for these enormous animals.
Despite the abundance of game, Katavi’s wildlife seems oddly lop-sided. Much of the game - elephant, buffalo, warthog, kongoni, zebras, waterbuck, and impala – is here in concentrations you would regard as normal in any Tanzanian park.
But in contrast to the profusion of water birds, the park, at this time of year, seems deficient in terrestrial birds, except for ground hornbill and raptors both of which are here in great numbers, especially palm nut vultures, snake eagles, and martial eagles.
Palmnut vulture, southern ground hornbill, and young martial eagle (Source: own photos)
Nor are the carnivores easy to spot in July. The tracks of leopards may be visible in the sandy soil in the early morning light, but they hide with great ease in the thick undergrowth. Only later, when the sun has burned away the low brush will the leopards take to the trees and reveal themselves very numerous here.
Lions too can be elusive at this time of year as they follow prey, which disperses far and wide on account of the many places to drink. Even baboons, jackals, and hyenas only make fleeting appearances in Katavi in July.
Yet, as in all good parks you are constantly reminded that rules are for breaking as African wild dogs, a rarity anywhere, suddenly make a welcome appearance.
African wild dogs are always a special sight (Source: own photos)
The good times of July will not last. Not in Katavi. Conditions are already changing, even this early in the season. Move beyond the plains and you will discover that the low Miombo forest is already golden and dry, trees shedding leaves, hinting at the extreme heat and lack of water which beckon a couple of months down the road. By September, the temperatures will have risen sharply and drought will have set in, turning life hellish for the animals of Katavi.
The river will narrow to a trickle and all other sources of water dry up, bar a few underground springs, whose waters barely suffice to keep open ever more congested mud holes in which desperate hippos trample each other for space – and a chance to survive.
Many will die. Lions kill hippos in Katavi in the dry period. There is not enough water to keep all the game alive. Every day ten thousand buffalos come to river to slake their thirst, each beast drinking 30 litres. Elephants, needing ten times that amount, come too. As do all the other game, tens of thousands of animals. All must drink or die. They have dragged their hooves long distances from dusty and scorched grasslands to the diminished river in the hope of succour. Many will only find crocodiles and lions. If it is blood sport you want, September is the time to visit Katavi.
Katavi is not a first-timer safari destination. Almost all who come here are experienced travellers, having been to better-known parks. They don’t come to Katavi to spot the Big Five in an afternoon. They understand it can be hard to see lion and leopard certain times a year. They are prepared to tolerate the constant buzz of Tsetse flies.
Each visit to Katavi offers only a slice of the ‘complete’ safari experience, depending on the time of year you visit. What still makes Katavi so worthwhile visiting is the quality of that slice! No other park gives visitors such a crazy concentrations of life early in the season and so much blood sport late in the season. No other park changes from heaven to hell with such remorseless indifference and speed.
My great wish, having visited, is to spend the whole season here to experience Katavi’s spectacular transfiguration from start to finish.
White-backed vultures, banded mongoose, and yellow-throated sand grouse (Source: own photos
Katavi has one last thing in its favour: remoteness. Few come here. The guides understand that Katavi’s fundamental attraction is that they are not on the radio sharing locations and rushing from one viewing to the next. In Katavi, you don’t tick boxes. Katavi is about quality. You take your time with this most mercurial of African environments.
The End
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