$4,120 pp (USD)
2 travelers on Start dateArrival
Arrival
Day 1
Arusha – Step Into Your Africa Adventure
Arusha – Step Into Your Africa Adventure
Your journey begins at Kilimanjaro International Airport or Arusha Airport, where your driver-guide will greet you with a warm karibu before the short transfer into Arusha. The route passes through farmland and past coffee-growing communities, with Mount Meru's broad, green flanks coming into view as you approach the city.
Today is deliberately relaxed – a chance to settle in, breathe in the warm Tanzanian air and begin to feel the rhythm of a place that moves at its own pace. After check-in at Under the Shade Safari Lodge, the rest of the day is yours. Enjoy a leisurely lunch, explore the lodge gardens, or arrange a short stroll into Arusha with your guide.
As evening falls, your guide will join you for a full briefing – walking you through the week ahead, the parks on the route, what to expect in the northern Serengeti, and any questions you might have before the adventure begins in earnest.
- Main Destination:
- Arusha (City)
- Accommodation:
- Under the Shade Safari Lodge
- Meals & Drinks:
Day 2
Tarangire National Park – Baobabs, Elephants and a Sense of Space
Tarangire National Park – Baobabs, Elephants and a Sense of Space
After breakfast, you leave Arusha for Tarangire – one of Tanzania's most rewarding and undervisited parks, and for many first-time visitors, the most surprising. The landscape is instantly captivating: a vast, undulating savannah studded with ancient baobab trees, their swollen trunks and reaching branches creating a skyline unlike anywhere else on the northern circuit.
The Tarangire River is the lifeblood of the ecosystem, and it draws extraordinary concentrations of elephant to its banks – some of the largest herds in Tanzania, numbering dozens of individuals, moving ponderously between forest and water in extended family columns. The park is also well known for its lions, its buffalo herds, and its exceptional birdlife, with species such as the yellow-collared lovebird and the lilac-breasted roller adding colour to every drive.
- Main Destination:
- Tarangire National Park
- Accommodation:
- Foresight Eco Lodge
Wildlife in Tarangire NP
- Meals & Drinks:
Day 3
Ngorongoro Crater – A World Apart
Ngorongoro Crater – A World Apart
Today is one of the most dramatic days of the entire journey. After breakfast, you drive to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and begin your descent into the crater – a moment that never loses its impact, no matter how many times your guide has made the journey. The walls drop away steeply on all sides, revealing a vast, self-contained world of grassland, forest, swamp and lake spread out 600 metres below.
The Ngorongoro Crater is the world's largest unbroken, unflooded volcanic caldera and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its floor – covering some 246 square kilometres – supports one of the most extraordinary concentrations of wildlife in Africa: lion prides, spotted hyena clans, the endangered black rhino, and enormous old elephant bulls with tusks that have taken decades to grow. On Lake Magadi, flamingos cast a pink haze over the water's surface.
After a full day on the crater floor, you will ascend back to the rim, then continue west towards the Serengeti.
- Main Destination:
- Ngorongoro Crater
- Accommodation:
- Serengeti House of Nature
Wildlife in Ngorongoro Crater
- Meals & Drinks:
Day 4
Into the Serengeti – Seronera and the Central Plains
Into the Serengeti – Seronera and the Central Plains
Today you head deep into the heart of the Serengeti, beginning with a morning game drive around Seronera – the central hub of the park, renowned for some of the most consistent year-round wildlife viewing in Tanzania. The area is famous for its resident population of leopard, often found resting in the branches of riverine trees along the Seronera River, as well as lion prides, cheetah and large herds of plains game.
From Seronera, you push further north through increasingly remote and spectacular landscapes towards the Mara River region – a journey of several hours that is itself a full game drive, with changing scenery and fresh sightings at every turn. The northern Serengeti is the quietest, least visited part of the park, offering wide horizons, resident wildlife and, when the Migration is in the area, some of the most dramatic sightings in all of East Africa.
You will arrive at Moyo Migration Camp Mara in the late afternoon.
- Main Destination:
- Central Serengeti National Park
- Accommodation:
- Northern Serengeti Moyo Migration Camp Mara
Wildlife in Serengeti NP
- Meals & Drinks:
Day 5
The Mara River – At the Heart of the Migration
The Mara River – At the Heart of the Migration
Northern Serengeti is the stage for one of nature's most extraordinary dramas and today you will explore it in full. Your guide will spend the day working the river crossings, the grasslands, the kopjes and the woodland, reading the landscape and the behaviour of the herds.
Mara River is home to large pods of hippo and some of Africa's biggest Nile crocodiles a powerful and prehistoric presence that adds another dimension to every crossing. The northern ecosystem also supports excellent resident populations of lion, elephant, giraffe and topi, and the remoteness of the area means that when you find a sighting, there is often very little competition with other vehicles.
If the Migration herds are present most likely July and October may bring the spectacle of a river crossing thousands of wildebeest massing on the bank, the tension building for minutes or even hours before the first animal plunges in and the rest follow in a thundering, churning rush.
- Main Destination:
- Northern Serengeti National Park
- Accommodation:
- Northern Serengeti Moyo Migration Camp Mara
- Meals & Drinks:
Day 6
Return through the Serengeti
Return through the Serengeti
Your final day in the Serengeti is a long, scenic game drive back through the heart of the park towards the eastern boundary and onwards to your lodge. The route retraces parts of the journey north, but the Serengeti never shows you the same thing twice – a different light, a different animal in a different place, and another opportunity to sit with a sighting for as long as you please.
Here in the central Serengeti, wildlife populations are at their densest, and it is here that you get to experience the signature landscapes of the East African safari in their most classic form – golden grassland, flat-topped acacia trees and granite kopjes rising from the plains, often with a lion or a family of rock hyrax stretched out across the warm stone.
By the time you arrive at Foresight Eco Lodge for your final night, you will have spent three remarkable days exploring the full length of this extraordinary park, from its iconic centre to its wild, remote northern frontier.
- Main Destination:
- Northern Serengeti National Park
- Accommodation:
- Foresight Eco Lodge
- Meals & Drinks:
Day 7
Karatu – Farewell to Tanzania
Karatu – Farewell to Tanzania
The final morning arrives quietly. Depending on your flight time, you may have a last relaxed hour at the lodge before your transfer back towards Arusha and Kilimanjaro International Airport.
The drive back gives you time to look back on seven remarkable days – from the elephant herds of Tarangire and the breathtaking amphitheatre of the Ngorongoro Crater, to the endless plains of the central Serengeti and the raw, remote drama of the Mara River in the north. Tanzania has a way of staying with you long after the dust settles.
We look forward to hearing about your memories, and to welcoming you back. Safari njema – safe travels.
- Main Destination:
- Arusha (City)
- Accommodation:
- No accommodation (End of tour)
- Meals & Drinks:
