"Asili Explorer Safaris: Go Local Explore Africa"
Asili Explorer Safaris
- Office In:
- Size:
- 1-5 employees (Founded in 2010)
- Member Of:
- Tanzania Tourist Board, Custom budget & mid-range & luxury tours that can start every day
- Tour Types:
- Custom budget & mid-range tours that can start every day
- Destinations:
- Price Range:
- $220 to $350 per person per day (USD, excl. int'l flights)
Reviews
FR
Email Alexandre | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Great company and employees!
We had an amazing private trip with Asili (4 days). The boss Joe is very kind and professional, he will also answer very quickly to all of your emails. Our guide, Ephata was amazing! He knows more than anyone else concerning the wildlife and he speaks french + english. We were able to see all the big five and so much more!! Thanks again guys you are the best!
SK
Email Katka | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Great experience!
Our safari trip with Joe lasted 6 days and every day we saw something new and wonderful. Lionesses hunting, leopard having breakfast, tons of elephants and zebras, a mother cheetah with 2 cubs... Joe and our cook Peter took very good care of us - timing was precise, food was delicious and we heard some interesting safari stories on top of all that. It was the kind of trip we can only recommend :) Thank you very much, Joe!
CN
Email Yi | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Ngorongoro and Serengeti
My family went for our first safari with Joe in January. He offered a nice price and good service. The lunch box made by his wife is the best among all the lunch boxes we have eaten. With him, we have seen lots of lions and all the big fives and even the wildebeest migration. He knows how to communicate with other guides which makes him know the location of every interesting spots. He not only showed us around the habitats of the animals but also explained their behaviors. Among all the activities, morning game drive is our favorite. Joe took us to a very good location to shoot the sunrise which enabled me to have the best sunrise photo of my life.
I have to say I would like to recommend Joe to others to have a special experince in Tanzania!
Spectacular
Our group safari was really spectacular we had a really good time in the Serengeti National park with our ever smiling guide Micheal ,very nice guy .We will plan another safari next year.
Email Trevor | 35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
A great safari by a great guy!
Thanks to Joe from Asili Explorer for a wonderful safari through Lake Manyara, Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Crater. We saw everything we wanted to see over four days and three nights. Joe has an eye like a hawk! He managed to spot animals that I am sure a lesser guide would have missed. Definitely recommended.
IN
Email Vivek Srivastava | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Enjoyable and memorable safari
Thanks to Joe from Asili Explorer for a wonderful safari. Overall, our trip was a most enjoyable and memorable experience, and we would have no hesitation in recommending Asili Explorer to other travellers.
Email Hester | 50-65 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Lake Manyara, Ndutu Area, Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater
This was a fantastic holiday and Joe our guide from Asili Explorer had a lot to do with it. Everything was well organised. We saw lots of animals(big 5 included). The wildebeest migration was an unforgettable sight! The lodges and tented camps was comfortable and very nice!
US
Email Karthik Kannan | 35-50 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
9 Day trip to Tanzania
Tanzania was on our bucket list ever since we visited Kenya in 2018. Our cousin in Toronto had used Asili Explorer Safaris for their trip to Tanzania in 2019 and spoke very highly of them. While we reached out to at least 4 other travel companies in Tanzania, we received the most prompt and detailed response from Asili. Their quote was easily the best we received and they were very flexible with our schedule, budget.
We had sketched out a rough plan of where we wanted to go and worked with Joe’s team to make that plan a reality. They reviewed our plan, suggested alternatives, gave us 3 options (high, medium, low cost) for lodges/camps for every place we stayed overnight and helped build an itinerary with every activity we wanted to include on our trip. Planning a trip to an unknown country never this easy, Asili Explorer Safaris made the experience a breeze and a pleasure.
On Day 1, we landed at the Kilimanjaro Int. Airport at noon. Immigration and Baggage claim was very pleasant. The immigration officials were extremely friendly. Asili’s driver/guide/naturalist Ramadanu was waiting for us at the entrance and greeted us and immediately took our bags from us. He took us to our custom built Land Cruiser (the one where the top opens) and gave us a brief overview of our 8 day trip. His kindness and thoroughness showed that he really cared and this showed throughout our trip. Rama drove us to Arusha, where we met Joe (the owner of Asili). Joe had arranged for a delicious African BBQ lunch. He also arranged a portable WIFI hostspot though most lodges had wifi. After lunch Rama drove us to the Burunge Tented Lodge near Tarangire National Park. The Burunge tented lodge was glamping at its best with common (dining/ kitchen/ shop) areas overlooked the Burunge lake and the view was great. We had a 3 course dinner. The tented camp itself was very luxurious with 3 single beds for the three of us and a restroom attached. The tent is built on stilts and had a wood floor, everything else was canvas tents with all the amenities and service of a luxury hotel. Our first night in Tanzania was memorable though it rained throughout the night. Rain outside but bone dry clean tents was a very comforting experience. Needless to say we were worried about the safari the next morning.
Day 2 of our trip we started with an early breakfast where we were greeted by elephants right off the lookout from the dining area. Though it rained all night, it let up in the morning and was beautiful. We were off to Tarangire National park, named for the river that runs through its stunning landscape, the Tarangire National Park is said to have the country’s largest population of elephants. At Tarangire we saw many elephants, giraffe, zebra, wildebeests, a leopard (which is an extremely rare sight, given that these animals are extremely shy), dik diks(small deer said to travel in pairs and mate for life), tons of birds (black headed heron, battler eagles, grey crowned cranes), warthogs, various kids of mongoose, cape buffalo, monkeys etc. We stopped midday and had the box lunch in our truck while watching a herd of elephants have a mud bath. We saw a male cheetah that had just killed a red buck and finished its meal only for 20+ vultures to descend on the leftovers. The sighting that completely surprised us was seeing a pride of a lioness with 5 adolescent cubs on top of a tree fast asleep. We had seen leopards climb before, but never lions. This pride was a clumsy lot, however we found them pretty high up in the trees, some of them very comfortable, others completely uneasy perched at precarious angles on the tree. On a very eventful first all-day safari, Rama, our driver/ safari guide was phenomenal, pointing out animals, stopping for pictures, throwing in snippets of valuable information about every little thing we saw or asked about. Rama just mentioned that Baboons also eat meat. This was news to our 12 year old who prides herself on knowing anything wildlife. Just as Rama said this, we saw a male Baboon dart past the road with what looked like an impala faun. We stopped and watched as he tore it apart and refused to share it with his clan. We reached Burunge for dinner and watched 12 huge male tuskers drink at the waterhole around 20 yards away from the dining area while we had dinner. It was an amazing sight to watch them in the dark, their majestic large frames barely visible because of the dim lodge lights. We could hear their trumpeting and purrs really close. It was an experience we speak about fondly very often.
Day 3 Rama drove us to Lake Manyara National Park, home of the tree climbing lions, funnily we did not see any tree climbing lions in Lake Manyara. We had decided that we would go on all day safaris throughout this trip, which meant early breakfast, boxed lunches to take on the game drives and home to the camp before dusk, which was typically by 6.30-7pm. Lake Manyara was elephant central. We came across herds and herds of elephants, some of them came so close we could almost touch them. Rama was extremely careful. When he first turned the truck off when the first herd was by us, we asked him why he did so. He explained that they will be calm if the truck is turned off and get jittery only when the truck engine is on. We noticed this behavior multiple times. These herds were all walking on the road that day from the direction of the main gate to the Iyambi gate which was opposite to how we were headed. Over 100 elephants walked past our truck. We really understood why these animals are called the gentle giants, you could see the family dynamics in these herds playing, pushing, goading, little ones mock charging. Watching these herds of elephants was like watching the Hathi march in "Jungle Book" all of them single file following each other around. The elephant calves were a joy to watch, they would run, stop, play, drop, roll and were generally super playful and full of energy. At Lake Manyara Rama stopped at the hot geyser where water that was hot enough to boil an egg flowed from the cracks on the cliffs and flowed into the lake. We saw many buffaloes and hippos. We even a tiny newly born hippo calf maybe few days old. From Lake Manyara we headed to the Ngorongoro Serena Lodge for the night. Before getting to the lodge we stopped at Ngorongoro nature conservation welcome center. Here they have a model of the crater and the area around the conservation. They also had a naturalist there, who basically explains everything you needed to know about the crater and its ecosystem. Highly recommend a quick stop at the welcome center, this place is a wealth of information and gives you a basic understanding on where you were headed.
The Ngorongoro Serena lodge was by far the most luxurious place we stayed in. The lodge was located on the rim of the Ngorongoro crater, which gave us breathtaking views of the crater from our room balcony. We reached the lodge early in the evening, which gave us some time to wind down with a beer on the balcony of our room. We eventually made our way to the common dining and bar area, where everyone was entertained by Masai dancers before we made our way to our 5 course dinner.
The Serena lodge at Ngorongoro and the conservation area is probably the most beautiful place we have ever seen in our travels. The view from the balcony of our lodge is breathtaking. The lodge sits on the edge of the crater and each room has a balcony overlooking the crater. We saw a giant male tusker elephant walk past our balcony and disappear down the crater's steep wall at sunset. The crater at night is something to witness, we heard lions roar and hyenas at night. It was like witnessing a full-on national geographic lion pride hunting video through sounds and no visuals. Since we were along the rim of the crater, perhaps the crater walls amplified all the sounds on the floor of the crater. If Burunge dinner was great, Ngorongoro Serena was just at a totally different level. Whatever you can imagine in a dinner buffet, you would find. The desert bar was stacked.
Day 4 had an early breakfast and made our way down to the floor of the Ngorongoro crater. The crater is like an ecosystem of its own. You literally have every animal here except for giraffes. There is one way into the crater and one way out and we are not being dramatic here.
The Highlight of the safari was that we saw a pride of about 5 cubs and lionesses. We thought that was the highlight until we saw a lioness walk away alone. We waited to see what she was doing. She started stalking a herd of wildebeest. We waited patiently as she inched her way close to them in the high grass. She stalked them for around 10 mins before making the charge. Since the grass near the wildebeest herd was not too high we could clearly see her moves. However, that meant the wilder beast spotted her before she could get really close. Though she did make the charge she could not make the catch. However, this was our first time actually watching a hunt though unsuccessful. We came across many hyenas lying in puddles of water cooling off right on the roads taken by the jeeps, we saw tons of hippos in the hippo pools, warthogs, ostrich, zebra, gnu, and so much more. We saw a couple juvenile male lions here as well. Since the crater was like a cauldron, it was not uncommon seeing jeeps driving across the crater to where many jeeps were, as that meant that an animal/ animals was spotted. We had boxed lunch at a beautiful picnic spot located at a hippo pool. It was a very unique experience to get off the jeep and have hippos swim so close by while we had our picnic lunch. They say hippos are territorial, it didn't seem like they had learnt to coexist with the picnickers. We had already seen the big 4 already: Lion, Leopard, Elephant and Buffalo. We finally saw the rare member of the big 5, the Rhino. We actually saw 3. This was thanks to Rama. To be truthful we were not so concerned to see the Rhino as we had seen many really up close in Lake Nakuru in Kenya. But Rama insisted that we cannot leave without seeing the big 5. Rama went out of the way to stop where we wanted, tell us about all the animals we were seeing, he peppered the day trip with many nuggets of information as well. After an entire day in the crater we made our way back up, you notice giraffes on the way up the crater and we figured it had to be difficult for giraffes, with their long legs, to traverse the steep slope down to the crater floor. Back at the Serena lodge, this night we stayed longer in the room to enjoy the views from our balcony.
On Day 5 morning we made our way to the Ndutu plains, along the way we stopped off at the Olduvai Gorge, also famously known as the "Cradle of Humankind". This site yielded the very first known fossil remains of two contemporary humans, both dating back to approximately 1.84 million years. It was a great historic site to visit which brought into perspective that humans have evolved over time a great deal. We made our way to the Lake Masek tented lodge, which was very much like the Lake Burunge tented camp we stayed in the first two days. Ndutu plains is the birthing place of millions of wildebeests. The Ndutu park is made of rolling grasslands peppered with alkaline lakes that attract flocks of flamingos. We saw so many giraffes here, probably the most giraffe we had seen on the entire trip. They say the best time to come to the plains is from December, when the great migration herds start to arrive from the north to April, when the herds move back northward, from where they came. Rama told us that during the season there was barely enough room for jeeps to traverse the terrain as there were so many wildebeest. Since we were a couple months before season, the plains were sparse apart from the flocks of flamingos. The one thing that stands out in this area was that there was one side of the Ndutu lake that was literally like a graveyard, as it was filled with bones of wildebeest, our guide Rama told us that this was because during birthing season there are either several stampedes or in some cases a lot of the animals get diseased and what we see there is remains of the animals that die during the birthing season. We saw a pride of lions right beside the track resting under a tree. One of the lionesses in the pride was heavily pregnant. We stopped for lunch right beside the pride and ate our lunch inside our vehicle while watching the resting lion pride just a few feet away.
Day 6, 7 and 8 were the grand finale of the trip, the Serengeti National Park, the reason we were here in Tanzania and boy this was a sight to behold. This was big cat country, we saw a majestic male lion with its pride a few minutes into entering the Serengeti. We saw so many cats here that we kept count and our final count for the trip was 67 lions, 7 cheetahs and 4 leopards. The biggest pride we saw was a 14 lion pride, the dominant males all majestic. This pride had a mating pair as well. Rama, our guide, knew his way around the Serengeti, we went from one place to the other, no maps, no google, all thanks to Rama. He was so experienced that we saw many jeeps stop to ask for directions from him. On the plains, it was difficult to tell one place from the next, every place looked so similar. The things that stood out for us about the Serengeti was the sheer number of cats, the number of wildebeest and zebra that had already started on their migration journey and the vastness of the plains. This place is grasslands till the eye can see. We got to see a leopard with its kill atop a tree, we saw the leopard eating its red buck kill, the videos we got are absolutely stunning. We then saw him climb down the tree. What a graceful agile climber. We saw cheetah brothers who had just taken down a fully grown wilder beast feasting on their kill. A heavily pregnant cheetah all alert under a tree. We saw the famous picture of a cheetah and her cub on an ant hill in person. For our stay we decided to go adventurous and stayed in the Kati Kati semi luxury camp. This was an experience in and of itself. Our tented camp was right in the middle of the wildebeest migration path. At night you could hear everything, the wildebeest, the hyena, and hear a lion roar. A hyena visited the dining tent the first evening and was chased away by the guards. This was unnerving the first night but nights 2 and 3 were awesome.
We decided to fly back from Serengeti to Arusha as we did not want to spend 8 hours driving back. Joe booked the air tickets for us as a part of the package. Rama dropped us off at the Seronera airstrip and waited to see us off. He said he was not leaving until he saw our flight take off. He need not have done that. We felt very well cared for. We took the 16 seater Cessna flight. It was an adventure in and of itself. It flew low right over the Ngorongoro crater and through the rift valley ranges. On arriving at Arusha Joe met us at the airport and took us for lunch. After lunch he dropped us at the Kilimanjaro airport.
All in all we had an awesome nine day trip. Thank you Asili and Joe for making the planning and execution of the trip of a lifetime possible. Thank you Rama and Joe for taking such good care of us, you made this trip memorable. We would recommend Tanzania to anyone who wants to see the Big Five, nothing compares to the sheer volume of wildlife you see here. We have been on multiple safaris in India and have been to Kenya. Asili Explorer Safaris service and the accommodations that they arranged is easily the best we have experienced.
Reply from Asili Explorer Safaris
Posted on Oct 20, 2023Thank you for taking the time to share your experience with us. We are thrilled to hear that you had an enjoyable safari with us. Our team works tirelessly to create memorable experiences, and your positive feedback reinforces our dedication.
We appreciate your trust in our services and look forward to the opportunity of hosting you on another adventure in the future. Your satisfaction is our top priority, and we are grateful for your support.
Wonderful holiday in rain
Thank you Asili especially Dennis for an amazing safari itinerary he organized for us , Elias our tour guide did the best job. even though there was a heavy rainfall in Ngorongoro and Serengeti but he managed to do his job perfectly, he spotted the big 5 and all essential animals while maintaining our safety. Elias is really a professional guide in terms of wildlife knowledge and experience in spotting the rare animals.
Ahasante sana, hope I remember swahili
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Email Svenn | 50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Asili Explorer give you the best value for the sild life in Tanzania National parks
We can recommend Asili Explorer, they arranged the very best safari tour for us. Our guide and driver Epzata, took us to the best places in Tarangire, Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater. Epzata have been in this branch for 17 years and know safari and how to do it exiting. The plan was to see the big five, we met four, miss out the Rhino. We met a lot of Elefants which was fighting, hunting lions, a leopard which was up in a tree, eating a gnu. A lot of big buffalo. I think we saw 7 different antilopes, giraff, waterbuck, hyena, pelican, hippo, sebra, gnu, crokodile and a lot of different birds. We was driving around in a good, well maintained, Toyota Land Cruiser Safari. Thanks to Epzata, Joe and Elly.