Lake Burunge

First, a correction

Lake Burunge is frequently listed with Lake Manyara National Park, and that is not where it is.

TANAPA’s own material is unambiguous on the point. Its Tarangire brochure states that the Tarangire River flows northward along the park and empties into Lake Burunge, and the published park map for Tarangire National Park shows the lake on the park’s western side, outside the boundary, with the Sangaiwe gate and a special campsite named Burunge on the park’s edge beside it. The Lake Manyara brochure does not mention Lake Burunge at all.

Lake Burunge is a separate alkaline lake in Babati District, west of Tarangire, fed by the Tarangire River. It is a considerable distance from Lake Manyara, which is a different lake in a different basin. Anyone planning around it should plan from Tarangire’s western side, not from the Manyara gate.

What it is

A shallow, seasonal, alkaline lake on the floor of the Rift, with no outlet. Its extent varies substantially between the wet and dry seasons, which is normal for lakes of this kind in this landscape and is the reason a map and a satellite image rarely agree about its shoreline.

It is the terminus of the Tarangire River, which TANAPA describes as fed by seasonal sand rivers rising in the eastern and south-eastern parts of the park and linked within the park to the Silale, Gurusi and Larmakau swamps. Everything that drains out of Tarangire ends up here.

What is not published

No Tanzanian authority publishes a size, a depth, a species list or visitor information for Lake Burunge. TANAPA names it once, as the river’s destination. It lies outside the national park, so TANAPA has no mandate over it; it is not a Ramsar site; and the figures that circulate for it in travel writing have no primary source behind them.

What can be said is that alkaline lakes of this kind in the Rift attract waterbirds and, when conditions suit, flamingo — see flamingo watching — and that the country between the lake and the park boundary is community land used for grazing.

How travellers actually encounter it

Usually from the road. TANAPA’s Sangaiwe gate on Tarangire’s western side has easy access from the main road towards Dodoma, and the authority points out a route many itineraries miss: entering at Sangaiwe gives access to the southern entry of Lake Manyara, from which a traverse of the full length of that park leads to Mto wa Mbu and on up through Karatu to Ngorongoro and the Serengeti. It is a longer way round and a considerably better one, and it passes Burunge.

There is also accommodation in the community areas on this side, and Babati and the country below Mount Hanang lie further south — a direction very few northern circuit itineraries take.

Common questions