Why you stop at Babati
Babati is a town on a lake, on the road south out of the northern circuit, and it is the first place most travellers heading that way actually stop. Its council describes it as the headquarters of Manyara Region and the business centre for Babati District, and gives its position as roughly equidistant between Kondoa town, Arusha and Singida — about 168 kilometres from each.
Two things bring visitors. The first is the lake itself, which Babati Town Council describes as holding around 400 hippo, along with water birds and indigenous fish, and which is visited by canoe with local guides. The second is that Babati is the last town of any size on the way to Mount Hanang, and on the way down to Kondoa and the rock art.
Where Babati sits
Babati Town Council was created in 2004 by Government Notice 352 of 17 September that year, when Babati District Council was divided. It covers 460.86 square kilometres and sits at about 1,347 metres above sea level, on the slopes running down from Mount Kwaraa, which is covered by the Ufyomi forest. The council gives the town’s population as 93,108 at the 2012 census.
The wider district is Rift Valley country. Babati District Council describes a landscape of undulating land, hills and escarpments, with the Dabil–Dareda escarpment dividing it into two levels about 1,500 metres apart, and altitudes running from 950 to 2,450 metres. The lower flats lie between Lake Babati and Lake Manyara. The district borders Monduli to the north, Karatu to the north-west, Mbulu to the west, Hanang to the south-west, Kondoa to the south and Simanjiro to the east.
The name, by the council’s own account, comes from a colonial-era misunderstanding: a German roadworks supervisor asking about a Gorowa boy was answered in Gorowa with baba ti, meaning “this is his father”, and took it for the name of the place.
The country around it
Babati District is more mixed than most of northern Tanzania. The district council gives the major ethnic groups as the Iraqw at over forty per cent, the Gorowa at thirty-five and the Mbugwe at twenty, with the remainder made up of people who have moved in from elsewhere. The Iraqw and the Gorowa are Cushitic-speaking peoples, which is unusual in a country that is overwhelmingly Bantu-speaking, and it is part of what makes this pocket of Tanzania distinctive.
The landscape divides sharply by altitude. Rainfall across the district ranges from 500 to 2,000 millimetres a year and average temperatures from 10 to 25 degrees, with the council noting that it is cold in the highlands around Bashnet and warm in the lowlands between Magugu and Minjingu. The lowlands are savannah and woodland with scattered trees; the highlands are forest and bush along the escarpment. Soils across the district are volcanic in origin.
The district held 312,392 people at the 2012 census. Its economy is agriculture, with a cluster of processing industry around it — Babati District Council names a sugar operation and a groundnut plant at Magugu, a soap factory at Kiru and the fertiliser works at Minjingu.
What there is to do
Lake Babati
Lake Babati is the reason the town appears on itineraries at all. It is a freshwater lake on the town’s edge with a substantial hippo population, and the standard trip is a canoe outing with local guides to see them from the water. That is a genuinely different experience from watching hippo from a vehicle in a park, and it is covered in the canoe safari guide, with the birds in the bird watching guide.
Hippo are the animal that kills most people in Africa, and a canoe puts you at their level. Guiding quality matters more here than at almost any other activity in this part of the country.
Mount Hanang
Mount Hanang is the steep isolated volcano south-west of Babati, and Babati is the last substantial town on the way to it. The climb itself starts from Katesh, where guides are arranged, and both the mountain and the elevation disagreements around it are dealt with in the mountain trekking guide.
Around the town
Babati Town Council names Mount Kwaraa and its power station, the Tururu falls, and a natural dam known locally as Bwawa la Mungu, with a spring at Sigino village recorded as Kisima cha Mungu. These are local outings rather than headline attractions, arranged in town. See the day hiking guide, the waterfall hiking guide and the village tours guide.
The district is farming country — the council lists pigeon peas, sunflower, maize, beans, rice, sweet potatoes, vegetables and fruit — and the farm tours guide covers seeing it properly.
Where Babati fits in a trip
Babati is a link rather than a destination in its own right, and it is most useful to travellers going somewhere the standard circuit does not. It sits on the road between the northern parks and central Tanzania: Tarangire and Lake Manyara are to the north, Hanang to the south-west, and Kondoa and the rock art to the south. A trip that runs Arusha to Kondoa naturally overnights here. What that drive is actually like, and how the central road corridor connects to the flights most itineraries use, is covered in the guide to travelling overland between Tanzania’s regions.
The district also borders two national parks and holds a community conservation area between them. Babati District Council names Tarangire and Lake Manyara as bordering the district, and the Lake Burunge Wildlife Management Area — locally JUIBU — as a further wildlife area within it. Wildlife management areas are village-owned and village-governed rather than state-run, which makes them a genuinely different proposition from a national park; the conservation tours guide covers how that works.
When to come
Babati District Council states the rainfall pattern plainly and it matches the Tanzania Meteorological Authority’s bimodal definition: short rains from October to December, long rains from February to May. This is worth noting, because the tourism shorthand that puts the short rains in November alone is a month late.
The council gives September, October and November as the hot months and May, June and July as the cool ones, with the temperature difference between the Bashnet highlands and the Magugu lowlands large enough to need different clothing on the same day. For a traveller the practical variable is the state of the unsurfaced roads out of town rather than comfort. The national rainfall calendar sets these two seasons against the single wet season most of the country south of here runs on.
Common questions about Babati
Why visit Babati?
For the hippo on Lake Babati, seen by canoe rather than from a vehicle, and as a staging point on the road to Mount Hanang and to the Kondoa rock art. It is a practical overnight rather than a destination on its own.
How many hippo are in Lake Babati?
Babati Town Council puts the figure at around 400, alongside water birds and indigenous fish species. No independent count was found for this guide.
How far is Babati from Arusha?
Babati Town Council gives the town as roughly 168 kilometres from Arusha, and about the same from Kondoa town and from Singida.
Is Babati the base for climbing Mount Hanang?
It is the nearest town of size and a sensible overnight on the way. The climb itself starts from Katesh, where local guides are arranged.
What region is Babati in?
Manyara Region, of which Babati Town Council describes the town as the regional headquarters as well as the administrative centre of Babati District.