North Tanzania Light Mobile Safari

From Arusha, transfer approx. 2½ hours to Tarangire National Park. Often bypassed by those exploring Tanzania’s famous northern safari circuit in favour of its more famous neighbours, the Serengeti and Ngorongoro, Tarangire is a quiet, lovely safari park that carries a real air of undiscovered Africa – the perfect place to start your light mobile adventure!

Following an afternoon of game drives in Tarangire, you set up camp in the north of the park. Today will be your first night under canvas in Tanzania. You sleep in large Dome or A-Frame tents with a comfy mattress on light weight camp beds. Beds are made up with sheets and blankets (or you can choose to have sleeping bags). Solar lighting and a hand torch are provided.

The facilities in the national park public camping sites will typically include very basic loos and washing areas and occasionally showers.

This is a participatory safari so you might like to help put up the tents on arrival, and take them down on departure. Your driver/guide and assistant will prepare meals.

Late morning, descend into the Crater for a full-day safari (maximum length permitted by the national park guidelines is six hours), with picnic lunch.

The best self-contained safari destination in the world, the rich pasture and permanent water of the crater floor shelters a staggering population of animals. Indeed, the 8,000km² crater floor is one of the most densely crowded game areas in the world, home to about 30,000 animals. The open grassland and natural walls make it easy to police, so it is also a stronghold for endangered species like black rhino and cheetah, which elsewhere are much more susceptible to poaching.

In the late afternoon, drive to your highland camp near the Crater rim for dinner and overnight.

The name ‘Serengeti’ is derived from the Maasai word 'Serengit', which means ‘endless plains’, or 'the place where the land runs forever'—a reference to the flat grasslands which are the park’s defining feature. It is these seemingly endless savannah plains which ensure that the park attracts such prodigious quantities of game. With any luck, you may see wildebeest, zebra, gazelles, hyena, lion, leopard, cheetah and caracal during your time in the Serengeti.

After a long game drive through the Crater Highlands and into the Serengeti, you'll arrive at your campsite in the central Seronera region of the park, and set up camp under the African night sky.

Your guide will discuss with you how best to use this day in the Serengeti. You may like to enjoy a full-day game drive with picnic lunch, or you may prefer to return to camp for lunch and to rest off the midday heat. Your game drive will likely focus on the central Seronera region of the Serengeti, though you have scope to travel further afield. During May and June, when the migration herds are typically seen in this region of the Serengeti, tracking the wildebeest and zebra herds may form the focus of the day’s activities.

Lake Manyara stretches along the base of the 600-metre high Rift Valley escarpment. Its ground water forests, bush plains, baobab strewn cliffs, and hot springs offer incredible ecological variety in a small area that is rich in wildlife. Lake Manyara is especially famous for protecting a huge variety of birdlife, particularly water birds: pink flamingo by the thousands, yellow-billed storks, herons, geese, grebes, ibises, kingfishers and much more can be seen in Lake Manyara.

Amongst Lake Manyara's other wild attractions are its tree-climbing lions. Among the only of their kind in the world, they make the mahogany and acacia trees of Lake Manyara their home, particularly during the rainy season.