Tanzania: With Zanzibar, Pemba & Mafia

Tanzania with Zanzibar, Pemba & Mafia by Philip Briggs is the 2009 version of the excellent guide we used on our recent trip to Tanzania. Briggs is thorough in his guide and tells everything you need to know in order to plan your trip and to see the most and understand the most while you are there. He gives excellent information about government, history, geography, wildlife, and people and good maps. The photos are beautiful. If you go to Tanzania, be sure to take this guide with you. We found it most helpful and it gave us understanding of people, places, and animals we were seeing that we could not otherwise have known.

Great guide book. I think it does as much as a guide book can do in a time when things are changing very rapidly in East Africa. I was in Tanzania doing research for several months in 2008, and used the book for hotels and restaurants, for the most part. These entries become outdated quickly, but Mr. Briggs compiled many selections that have maintained.

Philip Briggs KNOWS Tanzania. His insightful descriptions of the country's game parks and wildlife are matched by comprehensive accounts of accommodations. For Serengeti he details 20 camps and lodges compared with 15 in Lizzie Williams' "Footprint Tanzania" and only 10 in Jens Finke's "The Rough Guide to Tanzania." Although rates generally increase by the time a guide appears in print, Briggs gives actual costs in U.S. dollars, thus facilitating accurate comparisons. He also organizes coverage of Serengeti accommodations by regions of this vast park, including rationale for visiting each area by time of year for optimal wildlife viewing. While both Briggs and Williams, but not Finke, include Kijereshi Lodge as a moderately priced option in Serengeti's Western Corridor, only Briggs suggests Mbalageti Serengeti as a "relatively affordable alternative" in that area. Granted, Serengeti is not the whole of Tanzania, but it is arguably the gem of Tanzania and, as such, deserves priority coverage by any guidebook to the country. Having organized safaris in both the northern and southern circuits, I'm convinced that Briggs possesses the most intimate knowledge of the country. I know of no guidebook that does everything best, but of these three good Tanzania guides, the Bradt guide is tops.