Current Time in Tabora, Tanzania

Tabora lies in west-central Tanzania, on a high plateau of miombo woodland roughly midway between Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika and the Indian Ocean coast. The surrounding country is a rolling expanse of open forest, tall grass and granite outcrops, and the town itself is famous for the avenues of mango trees planted along its roads, which provide deep shade and, in season, an abundance of fruit. The climate is warm and dry for much of the year.

Around three hundred thousand people live in the city, which is the capital of Tabora Region. Its importance is historic and logistical. Tabora is the great junction of the Tanzanian railway system, the point where the central line from Dar es Salaam divides, one branch running west to Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika and the other north to Mwanza on Lake Victoria. The region is also a leading producer of tobacco and of honey and beeswax, harvested from hives in the miombo woodland and exported worldwide.

Under the name Kazeh, this was the most important settlement in the interior of East Africa in the nineteenth century, a walled trading town where Arab and Swahili caravans from Zanzibar rested before continuing towards the lakes. Ivory and enslaved people passed through it in enormous numbers. Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke stayed here in 1857 on the expedition that led to the European discovery of Lake Tanganyika, and David Livingstone lived in a house at nearby Kwihara, from which he set out on his final journey and to which his body was carried by his companions. Henry Morton Stanley also passed through. The Nyamwezi people of the region, renowned as porters, produced the formidable chief Mirambo, who challenged the traders' dominance in the 1870s. Germany made Tabora the administrative centre of its interior territory, building the railway and a fort, and the town was the scene of significant fighting during the First World War.

The Livingstone Memorial Museum at Kwihara, housed in the restored tembe where he stayed, is the principal attraction, along with the German boma, the old railway station and the Arab-influenced buildings of the town centre. The surrounding region offers the remote Ugalla River and Katavi game reserves, and the woodlands are excellent for birdwatching.

Nyamwezi culture remains strong, with drumming, dance societies and traditional healing practices, while Swahili is universal and Islam and Christianity are both widely practised. Honey, dried fish, cassava and grilled meat feature in local food, and the markets are busy with produce from surrounding villages.

Trains from Dar es Salaam still call at Tabora, a slow but memorable journey, and roads and a small airport provide alternatives. The city is proud of its schools, particularly Tabora Boys' Secondary School, a historic institution where Julius Nyerere, the founding president of Tanzania, studied and later taught, and which educated much of the country's early leadership.

Tabora combines shaded colonial streets, deep caravan-era history and a genuinely remote setting in the Tanzanian interior.