Gombe Stream

“At tiny Gombe Stream, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, Jane Goodall began her famous chimpanzee study in 1960 - and found them making tools, upending ideas of what makes us human.”

About Gombe Stream

In 1960 the young Jane Goodall arrived at Gombe to study its wild chimpanzees, and her patient observations, including chimps stripping leaves from stems to fish for termites, revealed tool-making in animals and revolutionised primatology. Her research project at Gombe became one of the longest-running studies of wild animals in the world. The area was protected as a national park, Tanzania's smallest, to safeguard the chimpanzees and their forest. Gombe remains a working research site as well as a destination, its chimpanzee communities among the best understood anywhere.

Overview Gombe Stream is Tanzania's smallest national park, a strip of steep forested hills running down to the shore of Lake Tanganyika in the far west, and one of the most famous places in the world for chimpanzees. It was here that Jane Goodall began her groundbreaking study of wild chimpanzees in 1960, research that has continued ever since and transformed our understanding of our closest relatives.

Goodall's Chimpanzees Goodall's observations at Gombe, including chimpanzees making and using tools, overturned long-held assumptions about what set humans apart from other animals. The park's chimpanzee communities are among the most studied on Earth, and visitors can trek into the forest to observe them, habituated over decades of research.

Forest, Lake and Trekking Beyond the chimps, Gombe's forested slopes shelter other primates and birds, and the clear waters of Lake Tanganyika, one of the world's deepest and oldest lakes, lap its shore. Visits centre on guided chimpanzee treks up the steep valleys.

Remote and Special Reached only by boat across the lake, Gombe is remote and visited in small numbers, making the chimpanzee encounters intimate.

The Experience

A visit to Gombe means trekking up steep, forested valleys with guides and trackers in search of the chimpanzee groups, then spending a strictly limited time observing them as they feed, groom, play and squabble, often remarkably close. The sense of watching animals so like ourselves, in the place where so much was learned about them, is profound. The setting on Lake Tanganyika adds to the experience, with boat travel along the shore and the chance to swim or relax by the clear water between treks. Numbers are small and the encounters intimate.

Why It Matters

Gombe Stream National Park is Tanzania's smallest national park and one of the most important sites in the history of science, where Jane Goodall's long-running study of wild chimpanzees transformed primatology and our understanding of human uniqueness.

Why Visit

It offers intimate encounters with wild chimpanzees in the very forest where their behaviour was first truly understood, in a beautiful lakeside setting. Trek with guides to the chimp groups, keep the required distance, and combine it with time on Lake Tanganyika.