From bush Adventure = into = visiting the People of Tanzania.

Karibu Nyumbani =Welcome at home!

Cultural Tourism in Tanzania has been developing since 1996, under the stewardship of the Tanzania Tourist Board (TTB) in collaboration with Ministry of Natural Resources & Tourism (MNRT) and The Netherlands Development Organization (SNV). Cultural Tourism was initiated by youth in local community in Northern Tanzania. The product came as a result of Maasai youth group that was used to dance alongside the Northern safari road accessing Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro and the Serengeti major tourist attractions in the area. During these volunteering dances, resulted to them been given a small change or tip for doing an interesting entertainment along the way. As it became popular, the youth group realized that, they are losing by lacking formal way of selling their cultural product. The group decided to seek assistance from SNV who were by that time doing a number of development projects in the Maasai land. SNV contacted the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism and TTB to see how collaboration can be forged to develop the product. At the same time National Tourism Policy had stipulated community involvement in Tourism operation giving a room for various community-based tourism initiatives to be kick-started.

Tanzania had to define its cultural tourism product to be more precise. In the Tanzania context however, cultural tourism adopts a community-based tourism approach in which the people are directly involved in designing, organizing tours and showing tourists aspects of their lives in the area they live in. While economic benefit is derived from this activity, some cross cultural exchange between visitors and the local people is also developed. Operated through the criteria of ownership of the activities undertaken and equitable distribution of the income generated are underlying factors of the programme. It is people tourism that enables tourists to experience the local people’s way of life, offering insights into the values, beliefs and traditions in the host communities’ own environments.

The Cultural Tourism Programme gives visitors to Tanzania the chance to tour tribal areas to meet the people and experience their traditional way of life and at the same time by your very visit make a small contribution to their living standard. Cultural Tourism Programmes, set up and run by the villagers themselves. Through the programmes, visitors also experience indigenous attractions and scenery of rural Tanzania.

It is a rewarding experience to leave the safari-car behind and climb the mountains of the agricultural tribes of northern Tanzania to see how coffee is grown by subsistence farmers or to walk across the plains to explore the rich traditions of the pastoral tribes whose culture is closely linked to nature and wildlife.

Still the visitor can follow the drumbeats and let the tribal dancers of southern Tanzania interpret the music and performances the tribes have inherited from their ancestors, or just go to the coast to sense the history of the Swahili people of coastal Tanzania.

And for the visitors who want to meet fishermen, cultivators, local minors, wildlife scouts, rainmakers and story-tellers, the land between Serengeti and Lake Victoria is the place to be.

Below are some of the Cultural tourism Enterprises that we have access to and recommend to you whenever you wish to travel with us; please follow the link and select which one can be of interest to you;