Mikumi National Park is small reserve with some lovely scenery and offers a gentle game experience – ideal for a two-night stop and a good base for day-trips to the Udzungwa Mountains. Mikumi shares a border and its game populations with the Selous, so you’ll find plenty here, including elephant, giraffe, wildebeest, zebra, warthog, impala and buffalo. The vast Mkata plain is often a good place to search for lion, whilst the lucky will spot leopard or even wild dog. The 3,230-square-kilometre Mikumi National Park, effectively a northern extension of the vast Selous Game Reserve, protects a combination of grassy floodplains and wooded hills flanked by the Uluguru and Udzungwa Mountains to the north and south. Referred to locally as the mini-Serengeti, the plains support large numbers of elephant, buffalo, zebra, giraffe and antelope, including wildebeest, impala, reedbuck and eland. Lions and spotted hyenas are present in reasonable numbers – if you don’t see them by day you’ll certainly hear them at night.

The park is bisected by a major road, which detracts slightly from its feeling of wilderness, but does make it easy to reach by vehicle; it’s just four hours south-west of Dar es Salaam.