Lake Eyasi
Hadzabe and Datoga cultural heartland
From - $450
per person, sharing
Destination Overview
Lake Eyasi is a seasonal, shallow, endorheic salt lake on the floor of the Great Rift Valley in northern Tanzania, south of the Ngorongoro highlands and west of Karatu. In wet years the lake fills and attracts great flocks of flamingo, pelican and fish eagle. In dry years it retreats to a series of soda pans and mudflats. Either way, this is a remarkably tranquil place to spend a day or two absorbing its natural setting, and above all a base for cultural encounters that are among the most powerful in Africa.
The Hadzabe are one of the last true hunter-gatherer societies on earth, believed to have lived in this part of the Rift Valley in essentially unchanged fashion for tens of thousands of years. Their language, which uses distinctive click consonants, is unrelated to any other African language family. There are perhaps a thousand Hadzabe today, split across small mobile bands, and a small number of families near Lake Eyasi welcome guests on early morning hunts. Guests join the men before dawn, watch bows and poison arrows being prepared, and follow the hunt on foot through the miombo. Success is not guaranteed, but the experience of moving through the bush with hunter-gatherers is unforgettable.
The Datoga are a pastoralist people related to the Maasai, known for their metalworking traditions, particularly the recycling of scrap iron and brass into knives, arrowheads, spearheads and jewellery. A visit to a Datoga blacksmith at his forge is a natural companion to a Hadzabe morning, and many of the arrowheads used by the Hadzabe are made by their Datoga neighbours in exactly this way. Datoga homesteads are dispersed across the hills around the lake and welcome cultural visits.
The Iraqw, the local agricultural people, farm the highlands above the lake and their terraced villages are the third piece of the cultural puzzle. A full day around Lake Eyasi can combine a dawn Hadzabe hunt, breakfast in a Datoga camp, and lunch at an Iraqw farm, giving a rare glimpse of three profoundly different ways of life within a single valley. Lake Eyasi combines naturally with a Serengeti or Ngorongoro safari for a two-night cultural extension.
Related Tours
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