CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL SIGHTING

Engaruka ruins are located in the Great Rift Valley in northern tourism circuit of Tanzania. Engaruka is located about 63 kilometers north of Mto wa Mbu, towards the road to Oldoinyo Lengai and Lake Natron. These ruins are lying at the foot of the rift valley escarpment and are one among the most important archaeological sites in Tanzania. An Iron Age farmer community [around 15th century], several thousand people had involved in irrigation and cultivation system, involving a stone-block canal channelling water from the crater highlands or a wide steep slope to stone lined cultivation terraces.

Key attractions while visiting the Kondoa Irangi includes:-

• Ancient historical ruins with abandoned remnants of the developed irrigation system, old graves, old irrigation canals, and terraces and house walls towards the ruin site
• Birds and Animals, cattle graze by Maasai along with herds of zebras and birds

Location & Getting There

Located about 63 Kilometers from Mto wa Mbu. The ruins are accessible only by road.

What to do

• Site seeing
• Bird watching
• Walking Safaris
• People and Culture (Maasai) – Cultural Bemis

When to go

• Dry season [July – October] for large mammals
• Wet season [November – June]

Lake Eyasi is a very scenic soda lake found on the southern border of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a couple of hours drive from Karatu. This less visited lake lies at the base of the Eyasi escarpment on the western Great Rift Valley wall, bordered by the Eyasi Escarpment in the northwest and the Kidero Mountains in the south. This is a hot, dry land, around which live the Hadzabe people, often associated with the Khoisan languages in Southern Africa because of their click language. The Hadzabe are believed to have lived here for nearly 10,000 years and continue to follow hunting-and-gathering traditions.

Also in the area are the Iraqw (Mbulu), a people of Cushitic origin who arrived about 2000 years ago, as well as the Datoga also Cushitic, the Maasai and various Bantu groups including the Nyakyusa, Nyamwezi, Chaga and Meru. The area is Tanzania’s main onion-growing centre, and there are impressive irrigation systems along the Chemchem River drawing its water from natural springs. The Hadzabe, a hunter-gatherer tribe, live close to the shores of Lake Eyasi, as do the Nilotic-speaking Datoga tribe who are pastoralists. Visits to these tribes are possible on half day or full day excursions which would include a visit to their homesteads, learning about their way of life, medicinal plants, and even animal tracking with bows and arrows with the Hadzabe hunters.

What you can learn from the Hadzabe

• Different kinds of materials being used to make arrows – arrow sticks, the preparation of poison and the point of poison in the arrow
• Fruit, root tubers and honey collection
• Barbeque preparation of fresh meat for the lucky days of hunting, normally about 2 -3 days of big kills per week but small kills are regular and common
• Training and exercise in arrow shooting and targeting
• Life in the caves in the rainy season, and under trees in the dry season
• Preparation of huts for the women (being made of branches of trees)

What you can learn from the Datoga

• How mud & cow dung huts are being prepared by women
• Preparation of the boma ( the cattle fence)
• Learn about black smiths, weapons & weapon making
• Cow milking and preparation of local butter
• Learn the history of polygamy in the Datoga tribe
• Preparation of “gissuda” – a local beer – for ceremonies, weddings, prayers to gods & ancestors. The type of honey used is absolutely natural and women are not allowed to drink this local beer made out of honey & some natural tubers.

The Olduvai Gorge, popularly referred to as “The Cradle of Humankind”, is the site where in 1959 Dr. Louis Leakey discovered the skull of Zinjanthropus or “Nutcracker Man” believed to have lived 1.75 million years ago. Later reclassified as Australopithecus boisei, this creature had a massive skull though small brained (500 cc) with huge teeth. Several months later Dr. Leakey found another fossil hominid in the same layer of excavation, called Homo habilis or “handy man”, smaller than the “Nutcracker Man” but with a larger brain (600 cc) and capable of making simple stone tools.

Kondoa Irangi Hills located in the central Tourism Circuit of Tanzania contains one of the worlds finest collections of prehistoric rock paintings with an estimated 1,600 individual paintings within two hundred different sites. The painted images represent both hunter-gatherers and agro-pastoralist ways of life, depicting the changing lifestyles over the past two thousand years. This is the latest Tanzania's World heritage site. The paintings are believed to have been created by the ancestors of the Sandawe and Hadzabe tribes, the current bushman of Tanzania, and containing caves paintings which are believed that are more than 1,500 years back.

Key attractions while visiting the Kondoa Irangi includes:-

• Paintings show symbols of simplified human figures [symbolize hunter's gatherers and arts people] involved in hunting, music instruments, crossing rivers, and animals such as elephants, giraffes and antelopes
• Daily rituals activities are currently going on Kondoa rock art site as are still used by local communities for weather divinations [rain making] and traditional healing rituals
• 150 shelters decorated

Location & Getting There

Located between Singida and Kondoa in the Central Tourism Circuit of Tanzania. Accessibility is by road, the Kondoa rock paintings about 20 kilometers north of Kondoa, 9 kilometers of the Kondoa – Arusha highway, and about 275 km southwest of Arusha [Northern Circuit].

What to do

• Site seeing
• Hiking
• Camping
• People and Culture – Swahili

When to go

• Dry season [July – October] for large mammals
• Wet season [November – June]

• the Kaole ruins dating back to the 12th century thought to mark one of the earliest contacts of Islam with Africa;
• the Old Fort built in 1860 for holding slaves for shipment to Zanzibar;
• the first Roman Catholic Church in East Africa built around 1868 used as a base to run a camp of about 650 freed slaves;
• the German colonial administration headquarters, the Boma, in the first capital of German East Africa until 1885;
• the Mission Museum, depicting the history of Bagamoyo;
• the Livingstone Memorial Church.
• Bagamoyo white sand beaches are considered some of the finest on the whole of the East African coast.

Kilwa, one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Tanzania, comprising the historical islands of Kilwa Kisiwani & Songo Mnara or Kilwa Kivinje, is located on the southern coast of Tanzania about 6 hours drive from Dar es Salaam; there are scheduled flights by small aircraft connecting Kilwa with Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam and the game parks.

Kilwa was the most powerful city state on the East African coast for three centuries from the 12th century to the 15th century, controlling trade from Sofala in Mozambique to Mombasa in Kenya, a stretch of about 1900 kilometres, plus the islands of Comoro. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Kilwa was an important trading centre linking Asia across the Indian Ocean with the African hinterland where ivory and gold were exchanged with beads, cotton cloth, porcelain and jewellery. Traders from the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf settled in Kilwa as early as the ninth century, leaving lasting cultural imprints that can still be seen in the preserved ruins with their elaborate architecture and the Swahili civilization on the East African coast.

Set like a jewel in the warm and tranquil coral waters of the Indian Ocean, 15 minutes flight from Dar es Salaam and less than an hour from Arusha, are the legendary islands of spices, fragrances, flowers and fruits – Zanzibar. To the shores of these islands came Summerians, Assyrians, Hindus, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Arabians, Chinese, Malaysians, and the Portuguese, all sailing in on Monsoon winds. From these shores the great European explorers Burton, Speke, Livingstone, Krapf, Rebman, and Grant set out on their voyages of discovery into the East and Central African hinterland.

The different peoples from all corners of the world that had visited and settled in Zanzibar over the centuries have left a lasting an imprint on the islands’ culture and architecture. Zanzibar is the birthplace of the fascinating “Swahili” culture with its elegant architecture full of balconies, courtyards, ornately hand-carved doors and mosques. The winding narrow streets, the House of Wonders, Tip Tip House (notorious slave merchant), and the Palace Museum are just some vivid reminders of the Islands’ long and colourful history. The Stone Town is travel into history, it is must tour for visitors to Zanzibar. Zanzibar Stone Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.