Travel to Iringa

a delightful and authentic place to explore

Set on the TanZam highway some 500 km west of Dar es Salaam, Iringa is a pleasant rural town with some interesting local sights.

Iringa is a pleasant busy market town and a major hub for local commerce. The old main street contains some impressive German colonial architecture, whilst the central market is an interesting and relatively welcoming hub.

Just west of Iringa lies the Stone Age site of Isimila, whose most impressive features are twenty metre high erosion columns. There is a small museum with modest displays of historic finds. The whole place has a pleasantly low-key feel and is a pleasure to explore.

Iringa lies at the junction of the main Tan-Zam highway and the side turning to Ruaha National Park. Further west are the Mufindi Highlands, a renowned area for tea plantations. Further east lie the wildlife reserves of Mikumi, Udzungwa and, eventually, Selous.

Although we do love an overland safari, the vast majority of visitors to the reserves in the south of Tanzania are connected by light aircraft, which means that Iringa gets completely bypassed. The high level of traffic on this main highway makes it difficult to argue in favour of travelling overland.

However, on the rare occasion that guests want to combine lodges in the Mufindi Highlands and Ruaha, this road journey can be done in a day, with time to explore Iringa along the way.

Alternatively, if you really wanted to explore Iringa, you could theoretically do it as a day trip out of Ruaha, although that would be very unusual.

Where to stay

There is no recommended accommodation in Iringa.

an rare inclusion in a trip these days