Chada Katavi: Tanzania’s wild west

In the million-acre Katavi National Park, you may well meet more lions than people

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Katavi National Park, in western Tanzania, had been all but abandoned when Chada was established as a primitive bush camp. Thirty years on, it is considerably more comfortable, but it still has the feel of an outpost.

Tents are zipped canvas, hot showers come in buckets (ordered in advance and hung from a nearby tree) and for seven months a year, when the tracks through the park are rendered impassable by rain and mud, the whole camp closes down.Despite the challenging environment, it’s not hard to see what attracted the pioneer campers. Wildlife is plentiful, and not in the least bit shy. And it’s still an empty place: sightings of other 4x4s are rare enough to foster a pleasant sense of kinship and camaraderie among fellow adventurers.

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Holden Frith is The Week’s digital director. He also makes regular appearances on “The Week Unwrapped”, speaking about subjects as diverse as vaccine development and bionic bomb-sniffing locusts. He joined The Week in 2013, spending five years editing the magazine’s website. Before that, he was deputy digital editor at The Sunday Times. He has also been TheTimes.co.uk’s technology editor and the launch editor of Wired magazine’s UK website. Holden has worked in journalism for nearly two decades, having started his professional career while completing an English literature degree at Cambridge University. He followed that with a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in Chicago. A keen photographer, he also writes travel features whenever he gets the chance.