Tanzania is bordered on the south by Mozambique, Malawi, and Zambia;
on the west by Zaire, Burundi, and Rwanda; on the north by Uganda and Kenya;
and on the east by the Indian Ocean.
Tanzania is the largest of the East African nations,
and it possesses
a geography as mythic as it is spectacular.
In the northeast of Tanzania is a mountainous region that includes Mt. Meru
(14,979 ft/4,566 m) and Mount Kilimanjaro (19,340 ft./5,895 m), the latter of
which is the highest point in Africa and is a most beautiful sight, when not
covered in cloud.
To the west of these peaks is Serengeti National Park, which has the greatest
concentration of migratory animals in the world (200,000 zebras, for example
and roughly 2,000,000 wildebeest!).
Within the Serengeti is Oldupai Gorge, the site of the famous discoveries by
the
Leakeys of fossil fragments of the very earliest ancestors of Homo sapiens.
The Serengeti also contains the marvelous Eden of Ngorongoro, a 20-mile-wide
volcanic crater that is home to an extraordinary concentration and diversity of
wildlife.
Moving west from the Serengeti, one reaches the shores of Lake Victoria,
the largest lake on the continent and one of the primary headwater reservoirs
of the Nile.
Southwest of Lake Victoria, and forming Tanzania's border with Zaire, is Lake
Tanganyika,
the longest and (after Lake Baikal) deepest freshwater lake in the world.
It was at Ujiji, a village on the Tanzanian shore of Lake Tanganyika, that H.M.
Stanley
presumably encountered David Livingstone in 1871.
Livingstone had fallen ill while searching for the source of the Nile, and despite his
illness he refused to leave.
Instead, he persuaded Stanley to accompany him on a journey to the
north end of Lake Tanganyika.
The region that they passed through has since become
famous as Gombe National Park,
the site of Jane Goodall's chimpanzee research station.
For a more detailed map click here
These maps are big, so be
patient.
Parts of this text were borrowed from other sources.
