Explore Asilia Is Africa's Newest Expedition Camp

A new expedition camp in remote Tanzania is employing sensitive safari travel to aid conservation in East Africa.

The road into Usangu Expedition Camp slices through the Miombo Woodlands, an autumnally beautiful (squint and it could be a Constable landscape) but inhospitable habitat extending over two million square kilometres, all the way to Angola. Nicknamed Tsetse Highway by the hardy construction crew who built it under relentless attack from biting flies, the track provides direct access to one of the last wildernesses in Tanzania and greater East Africa.

I’m one of the first visitors to make the journey, tucked safely inside one of Asilia Africa’s Gongo-mobiles, custom Land Rover hybrids fuelled by sugarcane. Through tsetse-proof screens I gaze on the muted greens of giant euphorbia, acacia and tamarind, the russet tones of bush willow and unspooling African vignettes as we move through the woodlands. A dust-storm of buffaloes blocks our path temporarily. A herd of elephants vanishes into the forest. A dry river-bed is dappled with sunlit giraffes. All a thrilling taste of what lies ahead.

Tanzania’s biodiversity is among the richest of any nation in Africa and the just-opened Usangu Camp provides ringside access to one of its unexplored wildernesses, the 6000-square-kilometre Usangu Wetlands.

Open seasonally from June until the end of January, the camp is a collaboration between lodge operators Asilia Africa, British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Tanzania’s peak wildlife research and national parks bodies. With Ratcliffe’s funding, Asilia’s conservation tourism credentials and the expertise of local authorities, the radical goal is to restore this critical habitat, chart its biodiversity and provide livelihoods for local villagers. At a time when some African safaris feel like carefully staged animal encounters, this is a chance to witness the cutting edge of continental wildlife conservation.

“Southern Tanzania is an amazing place but it is under threat,” says Ratcliffe. “The creation of a sustainable and ecologically friendly safari tourism business will both protect the wildlife and help the people of this amazing region.”

Usangu was annexed to central Ruaha, Tanzania’s second largest national park, in 2006 but for three decades before that it was open slather for hunters and poachers alike. Given its long-time inaccessibility and the fact that old habits die hard, it’s only now that poaching has been brought sufficiently under control to welcome travellers.

Beaming staff celebrate our arrival by singing, dancing and drumming us into a clearing of acacia and sickle bush beside the open-sided main lodge. Brandon Kemp, Asilia’s resourceful country manager, designed and built the camp in a style best described as repurposed poacher chic. Confiscated objects such as upturned dugout canoes are reimagined as a bar and coffee station. Fish traps and sun bleached cattle skulls decorate terminalia wood pylons. Most ingenious of all, Kemp soldered the wheel rims of three poachers’ bicycles to create a rotating grill, the camp’s only kitchen, on which everything cooks over embers.

The accommodation here provides uncommon luxury on the edge of these isolated floodplains. The six ensuite grassland tents are each 50 square metres, clad in gleaming teak and encased in spring-form screening that prevents bugs but preserves the epic views across the Great Ruaha River basin.

The intent is to immerse guests in the landscape without sacrificing comfort. Or security. One morning, staff inform me they had a lion sniffing around overnight. I’m only sorry I missed the excitement.

Usangu is quite the departure for Asilia, whose flagship property, Jabali Ridge, is a rockstar lodge five hours drive east of here, also in Ruaha National Park. This is the new model, explains Kemp. “It’s small. Its environmental footprint is appropriate. What we’ve done here is spent our money on conservation work, research work and cool gadgets rather than on the lodge itself. Is it comfortable? Absolutely. And you’ll see that it’s enough.”

He’s right. The tents are super-cosy, campfire meals are a daily highlight and the 18 staff, predominantly recruited from local villages to provide guests with a direct connection to the place, are charming hosts.

When Anderson Pakomyus Mesilla started working at Jabali Ridge four years ago he knew no English. He taught himself, in part, by watching Barack Obama’s speeches on YouTube and now works proudly as a safari guide. His 98-year-old grandfather was raised in Usangu, surviving on “smoked hornbills and honey”, and often tells Anderson stories of how these wetlands were once swarming with wildlife.

Kemp assures me they still are. “It’s actually carrying a lot of biodiversity but it’s almost forgotten. It’s more like Botswana or the Masai Mara. It’s, ‘Game on! Animals flying out of trees!’”

I get a sense of this bounty during our morning tea stop on day two, when we’re mesmerised by a seemingly endless stampede of topi antelopes and the odd zebra. Hundreds, probably thousands of them; a super-herd.

There’s a lovely rhythm to days here. Predawn, we gather around the campfire where Boazi, Anodi, Ali and Salome ease us gently into the day with hot drinks and quiet voices while the sky blushes slowly to life. Evenings, aided by Bloody Marys and South African chenin blanc, are livelier affairs with good food and great conversation by the fire.

Besides morning and afternoon game drives, there are walking safaris, riverside brunches with bonus impalas and fish eagles, boating excursions on the hipporich Great Ruaha River and night drives catching animals with thermal-imaging cameras. We never see another vehicle; the nearest lodge is 60 kilometres away. Usangu’s conservation focus allows guests to assist with wildlife monitoring in a region so alien that not even government agencies know what’s there. They mark down big-cat (cheetah, leopard, lion) sightings on ID sheets, upload photos to the iNaturalist app, help set camera traps and liaise with zealous young scientists at the on-site Douglas Bell Eco Research Station (also the camp’s only wi-fi hub so quite a popular hangout).

Though the local animals are still wary of humans, gradually, with each visit, they become more acclimatised. Anderson’s best sighting so far has been eight lions at a buffalo kill. And a pangolin wandering into camp during breakfast one day.

Helicopter pilot Hamish Rendall, who’s out here on anti-poaching duties, takes me up for an aerial view of the vast river delta. I immediately see how special Usangu is.

We spot elephants mirrored on the river banks, feasting on reeds. Herds of sable, roan, topi and eland, the largest antelopes on earth, thundering across the terrain. Ostriches strutting about like they own the place. Hippos, reedbuck, giraffes, snowy carpets of egrets and herons and much more. I’ve never witnessed such abundance and diversity in one place. “What’s great to see is that there’s a lot of young and they’re all doing really well,” says Rendall. “Once we get these [illegal herders] out, the wildlife numbers are going to go absolutely crazy.”