About us
Fourteen years, nine hundred trips, one office — and a workshop out the back.
Our story
In 2012, Emmanuel Loibanguti and Baraka Massawe bought a 1996 Land Cruiser with 380,000 kilometres on the clock and a loan neither of them could comfortably service. The first season they ran eleven trips. Fourteen years later we run more than a hundred a year, and that vehicle is still in the yard in Njiro. It will not be sold.
What has not changed is the structure. We are not a booking agent. We are not a marketing brand contracting the work out to whoever is cheapest that week. Nayara Africa employs its own guides, owns its own vehicles, runs its own mountain crew, and books its own camps. When you send an enquiry it is read in Arusha, and when something goes wrong at a park gate at seven in the morning, the person who fixes it works twenty metres from the person who sold you the trip.
We are licensed by the Tanzania Tourist Board (TALA), a member of the Tanzania Association of Tour Operators, and a partner of the Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project. Those three memberships are worth checking on any operator you consider, ours included.
By the numbers
The people
Four of the sixty-three. The rest are guides, cooks, camp hands, mountain crew and the two people who answer the phone before six in the morning.
Co-founder & Head Guide
Born in Monduli, guiding since 2004 and a Tanzania Tourist Board Grade One guide. Emmanuel co-founded Nayara with the Land Cruiser he had been saving for. He still guides eighty days a year because, in his words, an office does not tell you where the leopards are.
Operations Director & Mountain Manager
Neema runs everything that happens on Kilimanjaro: crew rosters, KPAP compliance, gear, and the twice-daily health data that comes down off the mountain. She has summited eleven times and turned back four, and is prouder of the four.
Head of Journeys
Sarah writes the itineraries. Fourteen years in Tanzanian travel, an encyclopaedic memory for which camp changed management, and a policy of quoting every park fee separately so guests can see where the money goes.
Workshop Manager
Fourteen Land Cruisers, one Baraka. Every vehicle is serviced in our Njiro workshop every 5,000km and carries two spares, a compressor, a fridge and a recovery kit. Nothing leaves the yard that he has not signed off.
Conservation & community
On a typical mid-range safari, roughly 30 to 35 per cent of what you pay us leaves as park entry fees, concession fees and crater permits, going to TANAPA and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority. That money funds ranger salaries, anti-poaching patrols, road maintenance and community projects on the park boundaries. We itemise it in every quote because guests deserve to see it.
Beyond the fees, we do four specific things:
How we work
Dates, rough budget, who is coming, what you care about. Two paragraphs is plenty. We will ask the rest.
Within one working day: a day-by-day route, named camps, and an itemised price with every park fee separated out.
Most itineraries go through two or three revisions. That is normal and expected. Nothing is confirmed until you are happy.
30% deposit confirms. A dossier lands six weeks out. From arrival to departure there is a real person on WhatsApp in Arusha.
Come and see
Tell us your dates and we will tell you honestly whether they are the right ones — and what to do instead if they are not.