Chada Camp
Location - Spectacularly placed on the edge of Chada floodplain
Accommodation - The original Katavi bush camp with 6 comfortable tents
Experience - Superb dry season game in remote and unspoilt location
Price Guide - $485 - 650 pppn
Chada Camp in Katavi is a place to touch the heart of the wild. Located in the remote wilderness of Katavi, Chada is a small, stylish and yet traditional safari camp. For the purist, it offers one of Africa's most authentic safari experiences. Read more?
This is a camp with great character in an exceptional location on Katavi's game rich Chada flood plain. In many ways this is the definitive bush camp and a place to immerse yourself in the wild as nowhere else. Chada was originally built by Roland Purcell as a place to escape to in the middle of nowhere in the days when few tourists came this far west in Tanzania. Today it's had a substantial upgrade from its original very basic form, but critically, it retains it's spontaneous, pioneering feel.
Despite a good dose of luxury replacing the more Spartan aspects of Roland's original camp, the focus does still remain on substance; great game, great service and a really authentic bush experience. This isn't a hotel experience, but somewhere you come to experience a fantastic contrast to daily life. Katavi is somewhere you really feel a part of the wilderness. Animals are never far away and sleeping here is always entertaining and rarely quiet.
From within your tent, the noise of hippo stumbling around in the dark on the flood plain in front, brawling like paranoid drunks whenever they meet, blends with the hyenas whooping and the lion roaring. In the dry season a group of young bull elephant regularly visit the camp and work their way from Tamarind to Tamarind hoovering up all the seed pods, so it's not unusual to look out from your tent and see an elephant on your doorstep.
Like many of Tanzania's best camps, this probably doesn't suit every body, but for those who enjoy a truly authentic bush experience, with the opportunity for more activities than simply game driving, it's nirvana.
Location - Katavi
Katavi National Park is remote, undeveloped and, at certain times of year, bristling with big wild animals. Until just a few years ago Chada Camp was the only place to stay and it was very little visited with the only access being via one of two little planes that ground their way between here and Arusha (one flown by the then owner of Chada Camp, Roland Purcell, and the other by Alex in pre Natural High days). Jump to page?
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