6-Day Classic Maasai Experience

Your safari driver-guide meets you at Kilimanjaro International Airport (or your arrival point) and drives you comfortably and safely to your hotel, where you can shake off the long journey. Our safari coordinator then briefs you on the next day's programme.

Stroll around the grounds, enjoy whatever catches your eye and, on a clear day, the jagged peaks of Mount Meru. Dinner and the night are at your hotel.

After breakfast at around 08:00, your guide drives you to Lake Manyara National Park. Its salty lake covers more than 200 square kilometres and attracts great flocks of pink flamingos, waders and waterfowl, while hippos crowd the hippo pool and the Rift Valley wall rises 600 metres above. Hot springs reaching 60°C are another remarkable feature, and the lively market town of Mto wa Mbu lies close by.

Dazzles of zebras graze peacefully alongside buffalo, warthogs and gazelles. After a hearty picnic lunch, continue to your lodge in Karatu for dinner and the night.

After breakfast at around 08:00, you set off for the Serengeti by way of Olduvai Gorge, the 'Cradle of Mankind'. First you visit the Kigeni Shifting Sands, a black, magnetic volcanic dune that creeps westwards across the Ngorongoro Conservation Area by about 17 metres a year. Then explore Olduvai Gorge itself, one of the world's most important prehistoric sites, discovered in the 1930s and still yielding vital evidence of early humans.

Next you visit a Maasai boma and step into the cultural world of the Maasai, before continuing into Serengeti National Park, with a picnic lunch along the way. Dinner and the night are at your camp in central Serengeti.

Spend the whole day exploring the Serengeti, a land where natural dramas never cease. Watch predators on the hunt and, depending on the season, the great wildebeest herds on the move.

This is where the herds face their three great killers: on land the spotted hyena, the bone-crushing matriarch of the plains, and the African painted dog, and in the rivers the giant crocodiles that wait patiently for the migration to reach them and feast every year when it crosses. After a picnic lunch on the plains, return to your camp in central Serengeti for dinner and the night.

Begin with an early-morning game drive in the Serengeti, then enjoy brunch as you game drive towards the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and descend to the crater floor. This extraordinary geological feature, one of Africa's natural wonders, formed when a great volcano erupted and collapsed in on itself. Its volcanic ash created fertile soils and, with water all year round, the crater grows rich, nutritious grass that supports more than 25,000 animals.

Enjoy a picnic lunch on the crater floor, then take a short game drive out of the crater to your lodge in Karatu for dinner and your final night.

After a hearty breakfast, and depending on your flight time, your guide drives you from Karatu to Kilimanjaro International Airport for your international flight home, marking the end of the tour.

If you would like to continue, you can extend your journey to the spice islands of Zanzibar, Pemba or Mafia.