Tululusia Waterfall

Twenty-eight metres, and the figure matters

Tululusia waterfall sits inside Arusha National Park on the slopes of Mount Meru. TANAPA’s own park brochure, under the heading Tululusia Hill and waterfall, gives its height as 28 metres and describes the falls as producing a sound loud enough to be heard from a distance.

That figure is worth stating flatly because a height of around a hundred feet — roughly thirty metres, but frequently rendered as though it were something larger — circulates widely in travel copy. The national parks authority that manages the site publishes 28 metres, and that is the number used here.

The two trails, and the duration nobody publishes

TANAPA lists six nature trails used for walking safaris in Arusha National Park, and two of them reach the waterfall:

• Momella gate to Tululusia Waterfall
• Momella gate to Campsite no. 3, via Tululusia Waterfall

The first is an out-and-back to the falls. The second continues past them.

TANAPA publishes no distance and no duration for either. The two-to-three-hour figure attached to the walk in a great deal of operator material has no authority behind it, and it is not repeated here. What can be said is that both walks start at the Momella gate, that both are on the park’s designated trail network, and that the difference between them is whether the falls are the turning point or a waypoint.

The rule that governs the walk

Arusha National Park publishes an unusually specific requirement, and it applies here. Hiking has to be arranged at one of the two gates, a fee is payable online, and any walk has to be accompanied by an armed ranger. That is TANAPA’s own statement about this park; the authority does not publish an equivalent blanket rule across all its parks, so it should not be read as one.

The practical consequence is that this is not a walk you decide on at the trailhead. It is booked at the gate, and the ranger is part of the arrangement rather than an optional extra. See walking safaris and waterfall hiking.

What the walk is like

TANAPA describes the waterfall as providing a cool place for visitors, with natural views, the sound of water and birds, and wildlife in the surrounding country. The route runs through the montane forest on Meru’s lower slopes, which is the same forest that makes this park, in TANAPA’s words, probably the best place in Tanzania to watch black-and-white colobus monkeys — see primate watching and forest walks.

The absence of lion in the park is the usual explanation given for why walking is permitted here at all when it is not in the bigger northern parks. Buffalo, which are present, remain the reason the ranger carries a rifle.

Common questions