Cultural Tours & Home Stays

Cultural tours in Tanzania are really rewarding and adding to your safari experience after a long wildlife safari in the most beautifully Tanzanian national parks it is high time now to leave your 4×4 safari vehicles and walk –cycling through the scenic local resident villages with greatest cultural landscapes in Africa. Tanzania has more to offer to our customer in terms of cultural experiences with over 120 resident different tribes with plenty of different history and activities, traditions, customs, and taboos where each tribe has unique values and experiences to showcase. Visitors can spend few hours, half a day excursion or may choose a customized cultural tour packages on our cultural tour packages to longer their stay for a couple of days among local people in their home villages or towns. Tanzania cultural tours give our customers unforgettable and unique cultural experiences while also creating a mutual understanding and friendships between visitors and local people at the same time providing rural areas the opportunity to build sustainable livelihood.

Cultural Tour Experiences

Maasai tribe is one of the large tribes in East Africa, the Maasai is easily one of the most emblematic of East Africa region. Maasai are known as fierce warriors especially the youth, this nomadic tribe is actually very friendly, welcoming, and open to visitors. Many of them still live a very traditional lifestyle and Maasai are easy to spot by their distinctive clothing. On a Maasai tour you can expect to learn about the overall Maasai experience, here you can learn about their religious beliefs, their traditions and all the Maasai lifestyle. Travelers choosing to visit Maasai community will have the opportunity to enter one of their traditional dwellings and hear them sing and dance (you can join them on a dance if you wish) and see the famous Maasai jumping abilities. It is a trip that also offers the opportunity to support these local families by buying their handmade crafts directly from the tribe. A tour to experience Maasai tribe can easily be added to any Tanzania safari itinerary which includes the Tarangire, Ruaha, Mikumi, Lake Manyara, Serengeti, or Ngorongoro Conservation Area to mention a few as the Maasai are spread all over Tanzania. When at the Maasai boma visitors normally have a lot to experience and those who wish to extend their time and spend more days here (a week or more) and experience the real day to day Maasai life participating on a number of daily Maasai activities including but not limited to Milking, Cleaning the house, Fetching water, Cattle rearing and grazing, Food preparations, Maasai BBQ night, Building a Maasai hut, Visit local herbalists and traditional Doctors, Visit to Local Maasai midwives, Dress in Maasai clothes, Gathering and Carrying fire woods, Learn about age groups and their social responsibilities, Learn traditional ways to make fire, See and participate how Maasai drink raw blood from live cow, Maasai Dance, Sit around fire in evening/nights after dinner and listen to story tellers of the community, During Market days, they can visit Maasai Market and Visit to local Maasai school

The Hadzabe are one of the few true hunter-gatherer tribes left in the world. They live in simple temporary shelters and live by hunting with bows, using poisoned arrow-tips for large game. They hunt for anything from mice to giraffe, with baboon being their preferred game. If they are successful in killing large game such as giraffe, often the tribe will simply relocate to the kill site rather than transport the game. They also forage for roots and berries and are experts at herbal medicine. They create fire by rubbing sticks together in an amazingly short time. Their clothing is also based on availability, wearing animal skins or donated clothing. An attempt to bring the Hadzabe into a more modern existence and give education to the children by the government has failed. They truly love their way of life but their hunting grounds are diminishing making their existence tougher. They reside near the shores of Lake Eyasi, as do the Nilotic-speaking Datoga tribe. A tour will include the opportunity to go along on a hunt and experience their singing and dancing. This is an amazing opportunity to learn about a vanishing lifestyle. This tour can be added to any Tanzania wildlife safari that is near to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

Datoga are also known as the “Mang’ati” in Swahili, These are agro-pastoral nomadic Nilotic speaking people spread in many area in Tanzania including Singida, Manyara and Arusha Region of north and some par of the north central Tanzania near Mt. Hanang, Lake Basotu – Manyara region and Lake Eyasi in Arusha region. Datoga people occupies, precisely, the areas around the Rift Valley in the regions of Arusha, Sangida, Dodoma, Shinyanga, Tabora and Mara, about 70 percent of Datoga community are found in the present Hanang and Mbulu district Manyara Region. This tribe consider themselves the oldest tribe in Tanzania of which the Maasai and Bushmen also claim this as well. Datoga are proud people and are first and foremost fierce warrior’s known for their stealth ability to eliminate their enemies. Datoga eat almost similar to Maasai tribe, while at their area you can learn their history, traditions, customs, and all other ways of life plus their daily activities. The tour can be added to your Northern Tanzania safari itinerary and experience this historical tribe in Tanzania.

The Sonjo people are located on the Sonjo land about 30-40 miles west of Lake Natron, Sonjo land is the administrative part of Arusha region in the Ngorongoro district in the Loliondo 20 Kilometres to the north west across the hills from the main Sonjo areas. These people speaks Sonjo which is a Bantu language, their area was historically part of the ancestral land of the Sonjo. Sonjo people have lived there for centuries isolated within Maasai territoy. Sonjo people are known for their use of irrigation systems in agriculture. They have consequently been linked by some historians with the Engaruka complex, situated some 60 miles to the southeast of their land. Sonjo language is refered as Kitemi or Gitemi, whose closest living cousins are those found around Mount Kenya (Meru, Kikuyu). Here travelers will have chance to learn the most things that the community is known for, Sonjo tribe is well known for their agricultural way of life believed to be the major reason their migration took place little by little over thousands of years in search of fertile and well-watered land to farm. On a Sonjo tour you will have extreme opportunity to experience their beautiful cultural ways of life including learning and interact on their traditional music and gain a lesson on what role a music plays in the Sonjo culture. Music helps shapes their entire way of life and is a widely practiced art in the entire community, music is used for several ritual purposes, rainmaking ceremonies, healing ceremonies, marriages, and other festive or civil events.