Day Trip to Mkomazi National Park

Mkomazi National Park is located in north eastern Tanzania on the Kenyan border, in Kilimanjaro Region and Tanga Region. It was established as a game reserve in 1951 and upgraded to be a national park in 2006.The park covers over 3,200 km2 and is dominated by Acacia-Commiphora vegetation; it is contiguous with Kenya’s Tsavo West National Park.

The area commonly called ‘Mkomazi’ is actually the union of two previous game reserves, the Umba Game Reserve in the east (in Lushoto District, Tanga Region) and the Mkomazi Game Reserve in the west (in Same District, Kilimanjaro Region); in government documents they are sometimes called the Mkomazi/Umba Game Reserves. Of the two, Mkomazi is larger, and has more diversity of relief and habitat, and a longer shared border with Tsavo West National Park. In the rest of this entry ‘Mkomazi’ will refer to both the Mkomazi and Umba reserves together.