Natural Wonders of Tanzania: The 7 Most Beautiful Places to Visit

Tanzania holds one of the richest concentrations of wild landscapes on Earth. Ancient volcanic activity in the northern highlands built the fertile soils of the Serengeti plains and the giant collapsed caldera of Ngorongoro, while nearby stands Kilimanjaro, a dormant volcano and Africa's highest peak. Grassland, forest, soda lakes, and glaciated summit combine in a compact region that supports the continent's greatest gatherings of large mammals — and the Maasai who have long lived among them. Below are the 7 natural wonders of Tanzania in the atlas — the most beautiful places to build a trip around, each with what makes it remarkable, when to go, and how to reach it. Best overall time: June to October (dry season) for wildlife and Kilimanjaro treks; the migration's river crossings peak around July–October and calving around January–March.

Lake Natron

Arusha Region, northern Tanzania

A caustic soda lake that burns blood-red with salt-loving microbes — lethal to most life, yet the single most important breeding ground on Earth for lesser flamingos.

Lake Africa

Serengeti

Northern Tanzania

The archetypal African plain — endless golden grassland that hosts the greatest land-mammal migration on Earth, as over a million wildebeest and hundreds of thousands of zebra move in a vast annual circle.

Savanna & plains Africa

Mount Kilimanjaro

Northern Tanzania

The highest mountain in Africa and the tallest free-standing mountain on Earth — a snow-capped volcanic giant rising alone from the savanna to 5,895 metres, climbable without technical gear yet crowned with vanishing equatorial glaciers.

Mountain Africa

Ngorongoro Crater

Ngorongoro Highlands, Northern Tanzania

The world's largest intact volcanic caldera — a 20-kilometre-wide, 600-metre-deep collapsed crater that has become a natural amphitheatre teeming with one of the densest concentrations of large wildlife on Earth.

Volcano Africa

Ol Doinyo Lengai

Gregory Rift, near Lake Natron, Northern Tanzania

The 'Mountain of God' — a near-perfect ash cone in the Rift Valley and the only active volcano on Earth known to erupt natrocarbonatite, a strange, cool, runny lava that flows black and dries chalky white.

Volcano Africa

Tarangire National Park

Manyara Region, Northern Tanzania

A baobab-studded savanna famous for its elephants — in the dry season, when the Tarangire River is the only water for miles, one of the densest concentrations of game in northern Tanzania gathers along its banks.

Savanna & plains Africa

Zanzibar Archipelago

Indian Ocean, off the Tanzanian coast

Tanzania's Indian Ocean islands — coral-fringed shores of blinding white sand and turquoise shallows, spice plantations and mangroves, wrapped around the old trading port of Stone Town.

Island Africa