Mahale Mountains National Park

Mahale is a forested mountain range on the shore of Lake Tanganyika in western Tanzania, home to a population of around a thousand chimpanzees, with one community habituated over decades of Japanese research. Chimpanzee tracking on foot is the reason to come, and the setting is the other: a white beach on the clearest lake in Africa, forest rising straight from the water, and no roads at all. It is reached by boat from Kigoma or by charter flight, has a few camps, and is a malaria area. The dry season from about June to October is best, and the chimps are often lower on the slopes then.