Destination guide
Mto wa Mbu
4.7· 440 traveller reviews
Why come
What Mto wa Mbu is known for
A hundred groups in one town
Irrigation drew people from across the country, and they stayed. Few places in Tanzania are as mixed.
The banana market
Dozens of varieties, most of which never leave the region, and one of them brewed rather than eaten.
On the way, not out of the way
It sits between Manyara and Ngorongoro, so it costs you a morning rather than a day.
A market town at the foot of the Rift escarpment, below Lake Manyara, and one of the few places in Tanzania where people from more than a hundred ethnic groups live in the same few streets. Irrigation from the escarpment made it farmable, and farming made it mixed — bananas, rice and a market that runs on languages nobody else shares.
Best time: year-round; market days are busiest. How long: a morning, usually folded into the drive between Manyara and the Ngorongoro gate rather than made a destination of its own.
Shape a journey around Mto wa Mbu
Tell us roughly when you can travel and what you most want to see. A real person in Arusha will reply, usually within a day.