Departure day, where you will fly to Tanzania with connecting flights along the way.

You land at Kilimanjaro Airport, which is close to Africa’s highest mountain, Kilimanjaro. The conical Mount Kilimanjaro is 5,895 metres high and enjoys a stunning location on the plateau on the border between Tanzania and Kenya..

Your driver/guide is waiting for you at Kilimanjaro Airport, ready to drive you to Highview Hotel. It is a combined drive and sightseeing tour of approx. 200 km, taking you through the villages of Chini, Kisongo, Makuyuni, Mto Wa Mbu, to the rolling landscape at Karatu, where Highview Hotel is located.

Guests at Highview Hotel are often welcomed by local Masai, dressed in their traditional attire. Perched on a hilltop, the hotel affords a colourful panorama over scenic valleys of small fields and coffee plantations. The farmers here employ many different ways of keeping the elephants and other animals from ravaging their crops, such as planting fences of chilli.

Once you arrive at the hotel, the rest of the day is yours to do as you please.

Please note: Today you’ll be driving to Highview Hotel in Karatu, where you’ll stay overnight This will leave you with a shorter drive to Serengeti than if you stay overnight at Springlands Hotel in Moshi, for example.

After breakfast, it is time to check out of the hotel and get ready for an exciting drive through the hilly highland plains of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area towards Serengeti National Park.

The ride takes you deep into the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, where you will have the chance to meet red-dressed Masai tribesmen in a local village. The Masai people are nomads, and their wealth is measured in cattle and goats. Their villages typically consist of a number of small huts arranged in a circle. The huts are built of branches, clay and cattle dung. The building style and the size of the huts illustrate how when the grass is exhausted in one area, the entire community can relocate to a different place where there is fresh pasture for the livestock. In the village, you can experience the everyday life of the Masai community and admire the traditional arts and crafts of the Masai women, which is primarily centred on work with beads. The Masai are keen to trade, and as the buyer you are expected to haggle.

After lunch, the tour continues to the impressive savannah landscape in Serengeti National Park. You will drive into the park via the north-western entrance at Nabi Hill Gate.

Serengeti is the oldest national park in Tanzania and covers an area of more than 14,500 km². The seemingly endless plains are interspersed with small lakes and occasional watercourses, and the park as a whole is home to pretty much all the animals inevitably associated with Africa: elephants, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, giraffes, buffalo, gnus, zebras, lions, leopards, cheetahs and ostriches, to name but a few … Serengeti actually holds the world record for animal numbers and is home to one of the world’s greatest animal-related marvels – the giant migration, in which gnus, zebras and gazelles in their hundreds of thousands wander from one part of the park to another, depending on the rainy season.

While you are on your game drive, you will be making your way towards the extraordinary Serengeti Wild Camp or Serengeti Wildebeest Camp* where you will be spending two nights.

The day starts with breakfast in the large communal tent, overlooking the majestic savannah. It is then time to head off on a full-day safari in Serengeti National Park. The objective is to capture photos of ‘The Big Five’: lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros and buffalo. The savannah is the habitat of countless gnus, Thomson’s gazelles, Grant’s gazelles, impalas, topi-antelopes, elands and warthogs, as well as all kinds of birds including Bateleur eagles, secretary birds, Guinea fowl, European rollers and crowned cranes. You are also sure to see (and smell) hippopotamuses, which gather in what are known as ‘hippo-pools’ – small lakes that can contain up to 50 hippopotamuses.

After a full day’s safari on the Serengeti plain, including a picnic lunch, you will return to Serengeti Wild Camp towards evening. You can then enjoy a hearty dinner before retiring to your tent for a good night’s sleep under the starry African sky, accompanied by the sounds of the savannah.

Exciting, new safari experiences await you today.

From the Serengeti, you drive south-east in the direction of Ngorongoro – the drive also serves as one last game drive on the Serengeti.

You arrive at the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in the morning and drive up the outside of the crater. The vegetation now changes significantly compared to the flat plains of the Serengeti, and the Masai appear – the women washing clothes in the waterholes, and the young boys driving their cattle across the grasslands.

From the top of the crater’s edge, the road winds 600 metres down on the inside of the extinct volcano to the 260 km² crater floor. There are various biotopes inside the lush crater: savannah, swamps, lakes, small rivers, acacia groves and even a saltwater lake.

The crater is home to 25,000–30,000 animals. Many people compare the experience on the crater floor to “a drive in Jurassic Park” because there are animals everywhere. There are several lion prides in the relatively small area, large buffalo herds, flamingos, and even the black rhino has found its way into the crater. The only animal you won’t see here is the giraffe, which has never moved from the Serengeti to the Ngorongoro Crater.

You eat the packed lunch you have brought with you at one of the selected places in the crater.

Late afternoon, you drive up the crater and back to the Highview Hotel, where you will stay for the night. If you wish to treat yourself to an extra special experience, you might like to upgrade to Ngorongoro Wild Camp (surcharge applies).

After breakfast and check-out from the hotel, you head to Lake Manyara National Park. Extending over an area of 330 m2, this is one of Tanzania’s smallest national parks, of which the lake itself covers a good two-thirds, depending on the season.

It was here on the southern shore of the lake that Ernest Hemingway’s camp was situated in the mid-1930s, while he went hunting for the largest and most beautiful kudu in the nearby area, known today as Tarangire National Park.

Lake Manyara National Park was established in 1960 to preserve the region’s unique ecosystem, and in 1981, it became part of UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB).

The area is part of the spectacular Great Rift Valley, which runs all the way through the African continent from the Middle East to Mozambique. Researchers believe that this rift system will at some point in the future cause the African continental plate to split into two separate continental plates and thus tear a large part of the African continent apart from the rest.

The national park, which is long and narrow, is bordered to the east by Lake Manyara itself, and to the west by the slopes of the Rift Valley, which are up to 600 metres high. In between are open grasslands, a jungle-like forest, mangroves, hot springs and swamps. The diversity is unrivalled, and it is impressive to see how drastically the landscape changes in a relatively small area. With the many different habitats comes a great variety of wildlife – although the animals can be difficult to spot amidst all the lushness.

The great biodiversity in the park also attracts many birds – more than 400 different bird species have been recorded here.

Lake Manyara itself is a soda lake, and the water level fluctuates a lot depending on whether it’s the rainy season or the dry season. Along the shore, you may be lucky enough to see large flocks of flamingos.

After lunch, you’ll drive to Kilimanjaro airport, from which you’ll fly home.

Arrive back in the UK following an intense, fantastic safari experience packed with memories to cherish for the rest of your life.