After breakfast from Arusha, you will proceed to Lake Manyara National Park for a full day game drive with picnic lunches. Later you will proceed to Lake Manyara Fanaka Lodge for dinner and your overnight stay. Stretching for 50km along the base of the rusty gold 600-metre high Rift Valley escarpment, Lake Manyara is a scenic gem with a setting extolled by Ernest Hemingway as “the loveliest I had seen in Africa”. The compact game-viewing circuit through Manyara offers a virtual microcosm of the Tanzanian safari experience. From the entrance gate, the road winds through an expanse of lush jungle-like groundwater forest where hundreds of baboon troops lounge nonchalantly along the roadside. Blue monkeys scamper nimbly between the ancient mahogany trees, dainty bushbuck tread warily through the shadows, and outsized forest hornbills honk cacophonously in the high canopy.
After breakfast, proceed to Serengeti National Park for a game drive with picnic lunches. Dinner and your overnight stay will be at Seronera Campsite.
A million wildebeest, each one driven by the same ancient rhythm, fulfilling its instinctive role in the inescapable cycle of life. They go on a frenzied three-week bout of territorial conquests and mating. It's survival of the fittest as 40km (25 miles) long columns plunge through crocodile-infested waters on the annual exodus north. The replenish the species in a brief population explosion that produces more than 8,000 calves daily before the 1,000 km (600 miles) pilgrimage begins again.
Today will be the "Serengeti game viewing day". After breakfast this morning, enjoy an amazing game drive. The great diversity of Serengeti wildlife is evident here—look for buffalo, hippopotamus, elephant, giraffe, antelope, Thompson’s and Grant’s gazelle, and lions. If you are there during the spectacular wildebeest migration, you will be more than astonished. In the late afternoon, we'll venture out in another game drive.
Everywhere there are animals, monkeys and, yes, birds…but look closely and you will be thrilled to see the huge jungle cats—lion, leopard and cheetah—watching the world go by. And go by it does. Rhino, gazelle, antelope and massive elephants by the hundreds. Animals in the trees, flying, camouflaged in the bush, in rivers and in streams. This is the adventure of a lifetime!
After breakfast in the morning, have a game drive in Serengeti National Park and see the beauty of this great park with a picnic lunch. In the afternoon after lunch, have a game drive en-route to Ngorongoro Crater for dinner and overnight stay at Ngorongoro Simba Campsite.
After early breakfast at around 5:50 am, descend down crater at 6:00 am for 6-7 hours game drive with a picnic lunch. We venture onto the crater floor for an up-close view of the residents of this World Heritage Site. Enjoy a picnic lunch here. The Ngorongoro Crater provides great game-viewing all year-round. The wildlife here makes up a permanent population because grazing and water supplies are plentiful throughout the seasons. In the afternoon, drive back to Mto wa Mbu at Fanaka Lodge & Campsites for dinner and your overnight stay.
You'll be picked up from Fanaka Lodge & Campsite at 7:30 am. You'll then have a safari briefing and afterwards, we depart for Tarangire National Park. Your first experience of safari will be the thrilling game drive through the vastness of Tarangire National Park. You'll arrive in good time for lunch. In the afternoon, have a game drive through the park and later drive back to Arusha.
This tour is 100% sustainable. We encourage our travelers to minimize their carbon footprint by choosing eco-friendly practices.
Cancellations made more than 60 days before departure qualify for an 80% refund of the deposit paid. Cancellations made between 30 and 59 days before departure qualify for a 50% refund of the deposit. Cancellations made less than 30 days before departure are non-refundable. Gorilla and Chimpanzee permits are non-refundable once purchased. Guests are advised to purchase comprehensive travel insurance for unforeseen circumstances.
Among Uganda's gorilla trekking safari experiences, booking a trek to visit the Nyakagezi family in Mgahinga Gorilla National Park follows its own distinct logistics shaped by the family's unique cross-border movement, the park's smaller size, and a booking process that, while broadly similar to Bwindi's, carries a few important differences worth understanding before you commit your dates and your deposit. Here is exactly how to book the Nyakagezi gorilla trek, step by step.
Planning an African safari or a tropical beach holiday is exciting. Whether you are tracking gorillas in Uganda, witnessing the Great Migration in Tanzania, exploring Kenya’s wildlife reserves, or relaxing on the white-sand beaches of Zanzibar, travel insurance should be part of your trip planning process. Travel insurance provides financial protection against unexpected events that can disrupt your holiday. From medical emergencies and trip cancellations to lost luggage and flight delays, the right policy can save you from significant expenses while traveling far from home.
Every now and then a destination becomes so famous that people start questioning whether it can possibly live up to its own reputation. Serengeti National Park is one of those places. You have seen the photographs, watched the documentaries, read the articles, and somewhere in the back of your mind a small but persistent voice is asking whether the reality can genuinely match the legend. Whether all those wildebeest, all those lion prides, all that extraordinary golden savannah stretching to the horizon is truly as breathtaking in person as it looks on a screen. The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that the Serengeti does not just live up to its reputation it quietly exceeds it in ways that no photograph or documentary has ever managed to fully capture, and here is exactly why.