Daraja Travel
ABOUT DARAJA

It all started with one decision

In 2016 Penny gave up a comfortable life in Australia — and the permanent residency she had already been granted — to come to Tanzania alone and spend a full year volunteering.

That same year she joined a small local travel company and began helping to run it. In November 2016 we hosted the first Chinese group in Daraja Travel’s history.

Penny walking ahead of a group of Chinese guests with their arms raised, a local guide and a Maasai man in a red shuka among them, a safari vehicle parked behind
One of the early Chinese groups, walking out across open country towards a Maasai village.

We are not only here to run trips

In 2017 Penny founded the Daraja school. Until it closed in 2025 it gave several hundred Tanzanian children a childhood with enough to eat and someone to look after them.

Over those years Penny’s story was covered by CCTV, Xinhua, Condé Nast Traveler and others, and she took part in several documentaries. None of that is what matters to us, though. What matters is the trust we have built up, piece by piece, with this land and the people on it.

Dozens of uniformed children holding soft toys sit on the steps of the Daraja school while teachers stand behind them waving; letters and numbers are painted on the wall, along with the Daraja bridge-arch mark
The children and teachers of the Daraja school. That arch on the wall is the Daraja mark.

Why now

From 2017 Daraja began handling Chinese visitors in volume, working as the ground operator for the major agencies back in China. During the pandemic Penny took an MBA at Oxford.

Coming back into the industry, she found the Tanzanian travel market still wasn’t transparent enough. What a quote actually covers, where the money goes — guests often couldn’t see any of it, and had little way of working out what they were paying for, or how much.

So we decided to do something few people take seriously: build a genuinely transparent market and open a direct channel to the traveller, so that Chinese visitors can walk into the real wild Tanzania for less money and with a much clearer view of what they are buying. In Swahili, “Daraja” means bridge. What we set out to build is a bridge into the wild, for every guest who travels with us.

The Arusha office: Penny and two colleagues in Daraja uniform at their desks, a zebra-stripe mural and a giraffe tapestry on the walls, a row of framed licences hanging top right, and the Tanzania National Parks booking system open on screen
The Arusha office. The framed certificates on the wall, top right, are the licences listed below.

What we hold to: licensed, and transparent

We run the business fully licensed and fully compliant. Every permit in place, every account clean — it may not be the cheapest way to operate, but it means your money and your itinerary are both protected.

We hold every licence required in Tanzania, and we have also established a travel agency in China licensed for outbound travel. That gives you a choice of how to pay:

Two ways to pay — your choice
Pay in USD
to our Tanzanian account
Pay in RMB
to our account in China
Our credentials, all of them open to check
Tanzania business registration no.
104561
Tanzania Tourist Board licence no.
033483
Tanzanian tour operators’ association membership no.
000631

We have always believed that operating properly and openly is not a burden. It is the only way to give guests the best possible experience and leave the team a fair profit at the same time.

This is not a temporary measure. It is the road we chose from the first day.

Start with a transparent quote

Tell us your dates and what interests you, and we will send back an itinerary and a quote that spells out every line of it.

Get your itinerary & quote