Katavi National Park is located Southwest Tanzania; east of Lake Tanganyika obtain its headquarters at Sitalike which lies 40 Kilometers (25 miles) south of Mpanda town. The park covers an area of 4,471 sq km (1,727 sq miles) of its total area and accessible both by road (A tough but spectacular day's drive from Mbeya (550 km/340 miles), or in the dry season only from Kigoma (390 km/240 miles) and charter flights from Dar or Arusha.

Tanzania's third largest national park, it lies in the remote southwest of the country, within a condensed arm of the Rift Valley that terminates in the shallow, brooding expanse of Lake Rukwa. Provided that Katavi is seldom visited it is among the fewer Tanzania National Parks which offer the true wilderness of Africa as you could visit it for the past century. Katavi’s most singular wildlife spectacle is provided by its hippos. Towards the end of the dry season, up to 200 individuals might flop together in any riverine pool of sufficient depth.

The feature of the vegetation of the Katavi National Park is the woodland which accommodates elusive populations of the localized eland, sable and roan antelopes. River Katuma and the seasonal Lakes Katavi and Chada attract numerous numbers of wildlife and birdlife to drink water and fetching other pasture. Along this water region is a best place to view wildlife which are coming for drink water as well as residential water wild animals such as hippo and crocodile making one of Tanzania’s densest concentrations of these species.

An estimated 4,000 elephants might come together on the area, collectively with several herds of 1,000-plus buffalo, while an abundance of giraffe, zebra, impala and reedbuck provide easy pickings for the numerous lion prides and spotted hyena clans whose territories converge on the floodplains.