Jane Goodall’s Tanzania

“My love affair with Africa began through reading Doctor Dolittle and Tarzan when I was 10 years old. I always dreamed of traveling there to see the continent’s abundant wildlife and animals, so I saved up money waitressing and then, when I was 23, I went to visit an old school friend living in Kenya. In 1957, it really was the ‘Dark Continent’ – there were no 747s or package tours, so I went out on the old Union-Castle shipping line, and because there was a war going on with Egypt at that time, we had to sail the long way around via South Africa. The idea was to stay in Kenya for a year and see what happened. I got off the boat at Mombasa, and as we drove up into the highlands, I saw giraffes and rhinos, and I thought, ‘This is the ‘real’ Africa I’ve come all the way to see.’ But it was on my first night, when I woke up to find a fresh leopard print outside my tent, that I knew I had arrived.

When I first began my journey in Africa, I had no intention of being a scientist; I wanted to be a naturalist. It was only after assisting the paleoanthropologist Dr Louis Leakey, who asked me to go and learn about the chimpanzees in Tanzania, that I found my calling. No one had ever done what I was about to do, and so I went to Gombe in Tanzania with my mother, who had volunteered to accompany me for my six-month research trip.

After studying the chimps for two years, and with my revolutionary findings that challenged two long-standing beliefs that only humans could construct and use tools, and that chimpanzees were vegetarians, I went to Cambridge University, where Dr Leakey pushed for me to go and get a PhD in ethology. However, I was shocked to be told that I’d carried out the study in the wrong way: I should have given the chimps numbers not names, and I couldn’t talk about personality or emotions – those were unique to human beings. It was thought there was a difference in kind between us and other animals, but I’d already learnt that that wasn’t true.

My relationship with the chimpanzees is what still connects me to Africa. They have become my life’s work. Throughout my many years of research and studying, I look back at my long stints in Africa and realize how much time and patience it took to gain their trust; I guess they had never seen a big blonde ape before! I would wear the same uniform of khaki clothes and have the same ponytail hairstyle, and eventually one male chimp called David Greybeard became accustomed to seeing me and began to lose his fear and start to trust me. David Greybeard was my favorite chimp, who I documented using tools and eating meat, which was the first time this had ever been seen – it was those two behavioral examples that enabled National Geographic to continue to fund my research. And so they sent out the Dutch photographer Hugo van Lawick (who later became my husband) to shoot some pictures to accompany a story about my relationship and work with the chimps. In order to get the necessary visuals, we had to set up a banana feeding station to get the animals to come closer. Unfortunately, the big males would take everything obvious, and the smaller chimps and females never got anything, so I would hide a banana under my shirt and one female chimp, Fifi (pictured here), who was then only six years old, began to understand that if I patted my shirt, I had a banana saved for her.

The other place that is very close to my heart is Tchimpounga in the Congo, where we have a chimpanzee sanctuary. There are these amazing gorges that at first look like a flat, unbroken plain of grass with some bushes, but when you come to the edge of the gorge, you realize you are in a thick forest with a stream. I like nothing more than to take a tent and go off-grid – it’s a magically remote wilderness and it reminds me of my first time in Africa with my mother, when we would camp in the bush completely alone.”

Chimpanzee sightings can never be guaranteed, but the odds of encountering them in Kibale are over 90%. Choose between a half-day expedition, where you’ll spend up to an hour in the company of our closest cousins, or a habituation group experience, which allows you to watch for a whole day while researchers take notes. Stay at Primate Lodge Kibale, tucked deep in the forest, a stone’s throw from the chimpanzee-tracking trailhead. This collection of cottages is the perfect base camp to experience the thrills of the National Park firsthand. For a more immersive adventure, book the Sky Tree House, built 10 meters above the ground – from there, you’ll be able to enjoy the same perspective as the chimps.

The largest remaining tract of montane rainforest in east Africa plays host to a plethora of primates – 13 species exist here, including a thriving chimpanzee population. With over 130 kms of walking trails and a suspended canopy walk, the chimpanzee tracking in Nyungwe is extra rewarding for the other mammals and birds encountered en route. Stay at One&Only Nyungwe House in a working tea plantation adjacent to the forest, where the bungalows are curiously elegant for a place so wild. There is even a superb spa and sleek infinity pool.