12-Day Tanzania & Kenya: A Journey for True Safari Aficionados

Karibu Tanzania! On arrival at Kilimanjaro International Airport you are met by your Gip Adventure guide and driven about an hour to your lodge in Arusha, set among gardens on the slopes of Mount Meru.

The rest of the day is at leisure to recover from your flight. Your guide joins you for a briefing on the safari ahead before dinner and a good night's rest.

After breakfast you drive about two hours south-west from Arusha to Tarangire National Park, arriving in time for a morning game drive. Tarangire is famous for its great herds of elephants, which gather along the Tarangire River in the dry season, and for its giant baobab trees, some many centuries old.

After a picnic or hot lunch, continue exploring the river valley and the swamps, looking for lions, leopards, buffaloes, giraffes, zebras and some of the park's more than 500 bird species. In the late afternoon you head to your lodge in the Tarangire area for dinner and the sounds of the African night.

After an early-morning game drive in Tarangire, drive about an hour and a half to Lake Manyara National Park, set at the foot of the dramatic Rift Valley wall. The park's groundwater forest, with its fig and mahogany trees, gives way to open grasslands and the alkaline lake beyond.

Spend the afternoon game viewing among blue monkeys and olive baboons, elephants and buffaloes, and look for the park's famous tree-climbing lions resting in the acacias. Thousands of water birds, sometimes including flamingos, gather on the lake shore. Late in the afternoon you climb up to Karatu, a green farming town in the highlands, for the night.

Descend early into the Ngorongoro Crater, the world's largest unbroken volcanic caldera and one of the finest wildlife areas on earth. About 600 m below the rim, the crater floor is home to lions, elephants, buffaloes, hyenas, zebras, wildebeests and flamingos on Lake Magadi, and it is one of the best places in Tanzania to see the endangered black rhino.

After a picnic lunch by the hippo pool, you ascend the crater wall and return to the highlands for the night at your lodge on the Ngorongoro rim, where you can watch the evening mist roll across the caldera.

Leave the crater rim after breakfast and descend through the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, where Maasai herders graze their cattle alongside zebras and giraffes. Stop at Olduvai Gorge, where the Leakeys uncovered some of the most important evidence of early human ancestors, and visit its small museum.

You enter Serengeti National Park at Naabi Hill Gate and game drive across the great southern and central plains to Seronera, arriving at your lodge in the Central Serengeti in the late afternoon, with a picnic lunch along the way.

A full day of game drives in the Seronera area of the Central Serengeti, with a picnic lunch out on the plains. The Seronera River valley is one of the best places in Africa for big cats: lions lounge on the granite kopjes, leopards rest in the sausage trees along the river and cheetahs scan the short-grass plains for gazelles.

Depending on the season, the Great Migration may be passing nearby, with hundreds of thousands of wildebeests and zebras moving across the plains. Hippo pools, elephants, giraffes, buffaloes and topi complete a memorable day. An optional sunrise hot-air balloon safari can be arranged.

Today you travel north, game driving through the Lobo area, a beautiful region of granite kopjes, rolling hills and permanent water that attracts elephants, buffaloes and resident lion prides. The drive to the far north takes most of the day, with a picnic lunch on the way.

You arrive in the Kogatende area of the Northern Serengeti, close to the Mara River and the Kenyan border, in the late afternoon. This is the wildest, least visited part of the park, and between July and October it is the setting for the Serengeti's most dramatic river crossings.

A full day exploring the Northern Serengeti. In the migration season (roughly July to October) you spend time along the Mara River, where hundreds of thousands of wildebeests and zebras gather on the banks before crossing past waiting crocodiles, one of the great spectacles of the natural world.

Outside the migration months the north is quiet and beautiful, with good populations of lions, leopards, cheetahs, elephants and hippos, and you will often have sightings to yourself. Picnic lunch on the plains and return to camp for a final Serengeti sunset.

After a last early-morning game drive and breakfast, transfer to the Kogatende airstrip for your scheduled light-aircraft flight back to Arusha, a scenic flight of about two hours over the plains, the Ngorongoro highlands and the Rift Valley. There is no direct tourist border crossing between the Serengeti and the Masai Mara, so this is the quickest way to begin the Kenyan part of your journey.

You are met at Arusha airport and transferred to your lodge. The afternoon is free to rest, or to visit a local coffee farm or the Cultural Heritage Centre (optional).

After breakfast drive north from Arusha past Mount Meru and Longido to Namanga, about two hours away. At the one-stop border post you complete Tanzanian exit and Kenyan entry formalities and meet your Kenyan guide and safari vehicle.

From Namanga it is a further 1.5–2 hours to Amboseli National Park. After lunch at your lodge, head out on an afternoon game drive among the park's legendary elephants, with Kilimanjaro rising above the plains on clear evenings, now seen from its northern side.

Rise early for the best chance of a clear view of Kilimanjaro, which often hides in cloud by mid-morning. Spend the full day exploring Amboseli: the Enkongo Narok and Longinye swamps, the seasonal bed of Lake Amboseli where mirages shimmer in the heat, and Observation Hill, where you can climb for a panoramic view over the park.

Amboseli is one of the best places in Africa to watch elephants up close, and you can spend unhurried time with family herds bathing and feeding in the swamps. Lions, hyenas, cheetahs, giraffes and more than 400 species of birds share the park. An optional visit to a Maasai village can be arranged in the afternoon.

Enjoy a final sunrise game drive in Amboseli, often the best time to photograph Kilimanjaro, before breakfast. Then drive north through the Maasai rangelands to Nairobi, about 4–5 hours.

Depending on your flight time, you may stop for lunch in the city or visit the Giraffe Centre (optional) before your transfer to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for your flight home. Safari njema!