Bushmen & Hunters: Hadzabe & Datoga Cultural Discovery

Lake Eyasi lies south-west of Ngorongoro in a broad, dry Rift Valley basin, and it is the last home of the Hadzabe - one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies on earth. Fewer than 1,300 Hadzabe still live in the escarpments and acacia thornbush around the lake, speaking a click language unrelated to any other, and pursuing an almost entirely subsistence lifestyle built around wild game, tubers, baobab pods and honey. This day trip is designed to give travellers a rare, respectful and completely unstaged encounter with them in their own country.

You depart Arusha before dawn to reach the Hadzabe camps at first light, when the men leave to hunt with hand-carved bows and poisoned arrows. You walk out with them, following whistled calls, tracks in the sand and the sudden explosive movement when a dik-dik or francolin is flushed. Nothing is staged: whatever the bush provides is what the group eats when it returns to the fire.

After the hunt you drive on to the Datoga, Nilotic pastoralists who have lived alongside the Hadzabe for centuries and traditionally supply them with metal arrowheads. In the Datoga boma you watch a blacksmith at his forge - the anvil is a boulder, the bellows are goatskin, the fuel is charcoal - and see arrowheads, knives and jewellery made from scavenged metal. Women demonstrate hide preparation, beadwork and the elaborate scarification that marks age and rank.

Everything on this trip is arranged directly with the community elders. Fees paid go to the households you visit, not to middlemen; photography is negotiated on the day; and the guides who accompany you are Iraqw and Hadzabe speakers who have worked with these families for years. The programme returns you to Arusha by evening.