Tag: tanzania

Where the earth opens: A morning inside Ngorongoro Crater

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By Rupi Mangat

Published: 20 December 2025 Saturday Nation magazine

We drive out of Karatu to reach the gates to Ngororongoro Conservation Area that’s home to the spectacular crater and the endless plains of the Serengeti – a fitting name borrowed from the Maa word, Siringit.

Dawn is breaking and the idea is to catch sunrise in the crater. At the gate, the baboons stir from the night trees, stretch and yawn to reveal massive jaws.

The gate keepers to the heavenly abode scrutinise our tickets, especially the Kenyan IDs. My Dad’s Kenyan ID states place of birth as India. For the Tanzania National Park’s (TANAPA = Kenya’s KWS) he must provide his passport to prove he is Kenyan or else he will not be allowed out of the NCA. Bizarre.

To cut a long story short, we do miss sunrise over the rim – but the view is surreal, for no one seeing this for the first time would believe there’s a crater below the opaque white-mist blanket

And as the ethereal orb in fiery hues of gold rises to chase away the mist, it’s jaw-dropping to watch the ancient crater reveal itself.

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Tracing East Africa’s beauty from Kitengela to Ngorongoro Crater

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A road trip where history, wildlife and modern East Africa meet at every turn. The journey is unforgettable as the destination itself. By Rupi Mangat

Published: Saturday Nation magazine 6 December 2025

The road from Nairobi to Ngorongoro on either side of the Kenya-Tanzania border has changed rapidly since the millennium. Kitengela, once a dusty road-side village is now a busy town with modern malls like Nairobi. The tarmac road leads us past Il Bisil that boasts a little-known Neolithic site when Homo sapien was beginning to settle around 10,000 years ago and then to the one-stop border at Namanga on the foothills of the Black Mountain or Ol Donyo Orok more popularly called the Namanga Hills. It was on this road I saw my first Greater kudu dash across the murrum road caught in the car light one night in 1974.

The one-stop border is efficient without the long wait of the old days and we’re in Tanzania.

The nyika is dry. It’s October and the land is parched. Mile after mile, it’s the thorn trees and scrub with only the green on Mount Longido breaking the monotone of earth and a solitary young Maasai giraffe.

Mt Longido near Namanga across the border in Tanzania. Credit Rupi Mangat
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The century-old Orion Tabora Hotel Copyright Rupi Mangat

Tabora

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Above:The century-old Orion Tabora Hotel  Copyright Rupi Mangat

The half-way town from Arusha to Kigoma

Published Nation media Saturday magazine 4 November 2017

Road map of Tanzania - trace our journey from Nairobi via Arusha to Tabora and then L.Tanganyika
Road map of Tanzania – trace our journey from Nairobi via Arusha to Tabora and then L.Tanganyika

650 kilometers west of Arusha, we’re in Tabora

It has long intrigued me. David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley, the hard-wired calculating American (but British-born) journalist spent five months in 1872 at Kazeh near Tabora after the epic meeting in Ujiji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika – with Stanley’s famous quote ‘Dr Livingstone, l presume’.

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Tarangire - land of the giants - centuries-old baobab tree and elephant Copyrith Rupi Mangat

Tarangire National Park

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Part 2 of 2

By the river’s edge

Watch the drama

Published 14 October 2017 Saturday magazine Nation newspaper

Above: Tarangire – land of the giants – centuries-old baobab tree and elephant
Copyright Rupi

It’s stark dry – August at the height of the dry season. Tall and golden, the sun-bleached grass shimmers under the blazing sun interspersed with stoic baobabs and towering termite mounds.  We drive across the dry riverbed and into Tarangire National Park from the adjoining Randilen Wildlife Management Area and watch a family of banded mongoose playing around a termite mound.

Banded mongoose dig a grub-fest by Silale Swamp Copyright Rupi Mangat
Banded mongoose dig a grub-fest at Silale Swamp Copyright Rupi Mangat

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