Briggs P. Guide to Tanzania

Second Edition. — Guilford, CT: The Globe Pequot Press Inc., 1996. — 327 p. — The Bradt Travel Guide. — ISBN: 0-76270-013-0.It would be easy to reduce an introduction to Tanzania to a list of statistics: it contains Africa's highest mountain, most famous national park and largest game reserve, while along its borders lie the three largest lakes on the continent. It would be just as easy to reduce Tanzania to a list of evocative place names: Zanzibar, Kilimanjaro, Serengeti, Dar es Salaam, Ngorongoro Crater, Olduvai Gorge, Gombe Stream, Lake Victoria...
Put simply, Tanzania embodies the Africa you have always dreamed of: vast plains teeming with wild animals, rainforests alive with cackling birds and monkeys, Kilimanjaro's snow-capped peaks rising dramatically above the surrounding flat scrubland, colourful Maasai herding their cattle alongside herds of grazing wildebeest, and perfect palm-lined beaches lapped by the clear warm waters of the Indian Ocean stretching as far as the eye can see. Almost 25% of the country is given over to conservation, protecting an estimated 20% of Africa's large mammals.
You might expect a country that can be described in such superlative terms to be crawling with tourists, but in the 1980s Tanzania attracted a fraction of the tourism of countries like Kenya, South Africa and more recently Zimbabwe. This was for a variety of reasons: an underfunded and underdeveloped tourist infrastructure, a reputation for corruption and bureaucracy, persistent food and fuel shortages, poor roads and inefficient public transport, and a lack of exposure.
This is changing, however, and what started off as a trickle of tourism in the late 1980s could soon become a flood. New hotels are being built, main roads have been re-surfaced, trains and ferries run on time, shortages are a thing of the past, and in our experience you couldn't hope to meet more agreeable officials anywhere.
For the average fly-in, fly-out tourist, Kilimanjaro, Zanzibar and the Serengeti are justification enough to visit Tanzania. For the adventurous traveller who is prepared to put up with basic accommodation and slow transport and who is prepared to learn a bit of KiSwahili, the national language, it is one of the most challenging, rewarding and fascinating countries in Africa. Virtually anywhere south of the Dar es Salaam-Mwanza railway line is miles from any beaten tourist track — except for Kigoma and Mbeya, both important junctions for overlanders, we spent two months in this part of Tanzania without seeing another traveller.
When you spend a long time in a country, your feelings towards it are determined as much by the people who live there as by the sights you see. My affection for Tanzania is greater than for any other African country I have visited. It is an oasis of peace and egalitarian values in a continent stoked up with political and tribal tensions, and its social mood embodies all that I respect in African culture. I found Tanzanians to be polite and courteous, yet also warm and genuine, both amongst themselves and in their dealings with foreigners.
Enjoy Tanzania. It's a wonderful country.