6 Days
English
2 - 10 people
4x4 safari vehicle with pop-up roof
Breakfasts, Lunch, Dinner
Luxury, Tanzania, Wildlife & Big Five
Arusha Coffee Lodge, Ngorongoro Crater Lodge, Serengeti Serena Safari Lodge
The moments that make this journey unforgettable.
Your flight lands at Kilimanjaro International Airport, where a driver-guide is waiting to meet you before the safari has even properly started. The drive to Arusha winds past coffee estates and banana groves in the shadow of Mount Meru, and by the time you reach Arusha Coffee Lodge the afternoon light is often soft enough for a walk through the working plantation the lodge sits on, coffee cherries drying on raised beds nearby. It’s a gentle first night, built for resetting after long-haul travel rather than diving straight into game drives.
Stay at Arusha Coffee Lodge.
After breakfast, the drive climbs steadily out of the lowlands, through farmland and forest, and up onto the rim of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, more than 2,200 metres above sea level. The air noticeably cools as you climb, and the road itself becomes part of the experience, skirting the edge of a caldera so large that clouds sometimes sit inside it rather than above it. You arrive at Ngorongoro Crater Lodge with the afternoon free, most guests spending it on the terrace watching the crater floor change colour as the sun drops, with the whole of tomorrow’s game drive laid out below.
Stay at Ngorongoro Crater Lodge.
You leave the lodge before sunrise, descending 600 metres down the crater wall while the floor below is still in shadow. Once down, you’re inside one of the most concentrated wildlife environments in Africa, a sealed volcanic caldera where an estimated 25,000 large mammals live year-round because nothing needs to migrate out. The day is spent moving between the crater’s distinct habitats, the soda-crusted edges of Lake Magadi where thousands of flamingos gather, the Lerai Forest where elephant bulls shelter from the heat, and the open grassland where lion prides rest in view of grazing zebra and wildebeest. This is also one of the most reliable places on the continent to encounter the critically endangered black rhino, often visible even at a distance across the crater floor. A picnic lunch is taken at a designated site inside the crater itself, before the ascent back up to the rim in the late afternoon, tired in the good way that a full day outdoors leaves you.
Stay at Ngorongoro Crater Lodge.
Leaving the highlands, the road drops back down toward the plains, and roughly halfway through the drive you stop at Olduvai Gorge, the site where Louis and Mary Leakey’s excavations produced some of the most significant fossil evidence in the story of human evolution. A short walk and a talk from a local guide covers what was found here and why it mattered, before continuing on toward an optional stop at a Maasai boma, where a local family welcomes you into their homestead to see traditional beadwork and cattle-herding life up close. From there, the terrain shifts from highland farmland to the short-grass plains that mark the edge of the Serengeti ecosystem, and by late afternoon you’re settling into Serengeti Serena Safari Lodge, perched on a hill overlooking the Seronera Valley below.
Stay at Serengeti Serena Safari Lodge.
With two game drives built into the day, morning and late afternoon, you have time to properly explore the Seronera Valley, a stretch of permanent rivers and riverine woodland that holds resident lion and leopard populations regardless of what the wider migration is doing elsewhere in the ecosystem. Leopards are often found draped along the branches of sausage trees close to the river, and the valley’s open plains regularly produce cheetah sightings in the cooler hours of early morning. Between drives, there’s time to rest at the lodge, whose pool looks directly out over the plains, so even downtime here still comes with a view worth having your camera nearby for.
Stay at Serengeti Serena Safari Lodge.
One last game drive at first light, timed to catch the plains waking up before the heat of the day settles in, gives you a final chance at a sighting you might have missed earlier in the week. From there, it’s a drive back across the Ngorongoro Highlands to Kilimanjaro International Airport, with your driver-guide on hand for the whole journey and enough buffer built into the schedule that you’re not racing the clock to make your onward flight.
Ngorongoro Conservation Area fees and Serengeti National Park entry fees for the full duration of your stay, so there are no per-day park charges to settle on arrival
A private 4×4 safari vehicle with a pop-up roof for unobstructed photography, and a dedicated English-speaking driver-guide with you for the entire trip, not swapped out between parks
All accommodation as detailed, on a full-board basis, breakfast, lunch, and dinner included at Arusha Coffee Lodge, Ngorongoro Crater Lodge, and Serengeti Serena Safari Lodge
✗International flights and Tanzania visa fees
✗Optional hot air balloon safari over the Serengeti
✗Travel insurance
✗ Gratuities for guides and camp staff
✗ Alcoholic and premium drinks not specified at each property
Descend onto Ngorongoro’s crater floor, one of the most reliable single-day Big Five sightings on the continent
Stop at Olduvai Gorge, the site that rewrote the story of early humankind, on the road west
Drive Seronera’s river valleys for resident lion and leopard, migration season or not
Cover two of Tanzania’s headline parks in six days, with no day lost purely to transit
Ngorongoro Crater alone offers a strong chance at all five in a single day, and the Serengeti extends that to cheetah and large predator sightings across open plains.
Yes, a Zanzibar or Pemba Island extension can be added to either end of this itinerary.
The Crater is a year-round destination; the Serengeti's central sector holds resident wildlife year-round, with the migration passing through at different times depending on rainfall patterns.
Yes, balloon capacity is limited and should be confirmed at the time of booking, not on arrival.
From$6,050.00
From$6,050.00
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