17 Day Tanzania Safari Serengeti, Ngorongoro & Private Island

Depart after breakfast for the Ngorongoro Conservation Area roughly four hours. The road climbs out of the rift floor past Mto wa Mbu and up the escarpment, and the country changes with the altitude: acacia to montane forest, dust to moisture, heat to cold. Cross into the Conservation Area, pass the crater rim viewpoint, and turn north into the higher country around Olmoti, away from the lodges concentrated on the southern rim. Arrive in the early afternoon. This is the highest ground in the Conservation Area, with views across grassland and Maasai bomas to the Gol Mountains and the south eastern Serengeti plains. A short orientation walk on the forest edge in the late afternoon gets the altitude into your legs and starts you reading the highlands cattle trails, buffalo sign, and the pastoral land use that has shaped this landscape for centuries. Dinner beside the fire. It is genuinely cold up here after dark.

Drive to the rim of the Empakaai Crater and descend on foot with an armed Conservation Area ranger. The path drops around three hundred metres through montane forest steep, shaded and full of birdsong and opens onto the shore of the soda lake that fills half the caldera floor. Lesser flamingo work the shallows in numbers that shift with the season. Buffalo graze the margin. On a clear morning the cone of Ol Doinyo Lengai stands to the north east. The climb out is the honest part of the day. The afternoon is deliberately unstructured: rest, walk further into the highlands, or visit a neighbouring Maasai homestead late in the day when the cattle come back to the boma the busiest and most genuine hour in a pastoral day, and a far better window into the culture than any staged performance. Back at camp as the temperature drops. Dinner, the fire, the quiet of high country.

An early breakfast and the drive around the rim to the descent road. The crater is a 260 square kilometre caldera with walls six hundred metres high, and the descent is an experience in itself the floor opening below you, mist burning off the Lerai forest, the scale of the place resolving as you drop into it. Arriving early matters: the first hours belong to the animals rather than to the vehicles. The whole day is spent below the rim, with a picnic lunch on the floor. Old heavy tusked elephant bulls work the Lerai fever tree forest. Buffalo gather in the hundreds on open grassland. Lake Magadi draws flamingo and a long list of waterbirds. Ngorongoro remains one of the few places on the continent where black rhino are seen with any regularity, and your guide will know which part of the floor the resident animals have been favouring. Late afternoon ascent and the drive back through the highland forest. The crater rewards a full day in a way it cannot reward a morning.

Leave the highlands and drop west through the Conservation Area, stopping at Olduvai Gorge where the Leakeys’ excavations rewrote the early human record. Beyond Olduvai the country flattens into short grass plains volcanic soil, no trees, enormous sky and you cross into Serengeti National Park heading for its eastern edge. Arrive at camp along the Ngare Nanyuki, a seasonal river in the far east of the park. This sector was closed for over twenty years to allow the cheetah population to recover and has only been open since 2014; the nearest other camp is an hour or more away. The afternoon drive establishes the ground: open plains broken by a few kopjes, a hard calcrete layer beneath the soil that keeps the trees out, and visibility to the horizon in every direction. Four nights here. Nothing gets packed in the morning.

The eastern Serengeti is the best cheetah country in the ecosystem, and the reason is visible from the vehicle: cheetah need open ground and clear sightlines to hunt, and they need distance from the lion and hyena that steal their kills and kill their cubs. This sector gives them all three. A morning here is spent scanning, waiting and following rather than driving which is a different discipline entirely and a far more interesting one. Lion here are numerous and unusually relaxed, and the resident prides use the few kopjes in the sector as lookouts and nurseries. Between roughly October and May the migration herds move across these plains on their way to and from the calving grounds in the south, and the whole landscape fills. Optional: Hot Air Balloon Safari A pre dawn ascent over the eastern Serengeti plains, drifting low as the light comes up, followed by a champagne bush breakfast on landing. USD 599 per person. Sundowners on the open ground and back to camp under a very large sky.

A full day with a picnic packed. The sector rewards distance: the Soit le Motonyi kopjes, the seasonal drainage lines, and the long open ground where the small predators do well. Serval, bat eared fox, black backed jackal and caracal all occur here, and this is one of the few parts of the Serengeti where you have the time and the space to look for them properly. Where the camp and conditions allow, a short guided walk with an armed ranger. Being on foot in the Serengeti is rare and worth doing even briefly it recalibrates the scale of everything you have been looking at from a vehicle. Dinner in camp with no other lights anywhere in view.

An open day, planned over breakfast. Four nights in one sector means your guide now knows the individual animals which cheetah has cubs, which pride has moved, where the leopard has been holding and the day is built on that rather than on a route. Back for lunch and the long quiet middle of a Serengeti day. This is the part that gets cut from shorter itineraries and it should not be; the plains at midday are worth watching from a chair. Out again for the best light of the day. Last evening in the east.

A morning game drive to the airstrip and a scheduled light aircraft flight north to Kogatende in the far northern Serengeti. The flight is under an hour and the landscape below tells the story of the ecosystem: open plains giving way to woodland, then to the hills and river systems of the north. Your guide meets you on the airstrip and the game drive starts there. The northern Serengeti is a different park: hills, riverine forest, long grass and a permanent river running through the middle. Between roughly July and October the migration is here and the Mara River crossings take place thousands of wildebeest massing on a bank, the hesitation, the first animal committing, and the chaos that follows, with crocodiles holding position in the deeper channels. Outside that window the north is quiet, green and full of resident game. Into camp above the river.

An early start for the river. The cool hours before midday are when the herds build on the banks and crossings are most likely, and your guide works the radio network to track which points are active and position accordingly. The photography at this hour is exceptional. Back to camp for lunch and a rest. There is another week of this journey to come and the pace is deliberate. The afternoon covers the wider northern landscape: the Lamai wedge, the Wogakuria kopjes, and the long grass country where leopard do well. Elephant are common here in a way they are not in the south, and the northern lion prides are large and confident.

Another full day, structured as conditions suggest. If the herds are on the river you go back to the river. If they are not, the north offers a genuinely different Serengeti dense resident game, excellent riverine birding, and country that most visitors on a standard circuit never reach at all. A short guided walk is possible from most northern camps and is worth taking. A picnic in the field and a slow return through the hills. This is the last Serengeti day of the journey. Dinner in camp. Tomorrow the journey goes to the coast.

A final morning game drive on the way to Kogatende Airstrip, then a scheduled flight south to Dar es Salaam, routing via an intermediate airstrip or Arusha depending on the day. This is the one transition night of the journey: the service to Songo Songo runs in the morning, and Dar is where it originates. Arrive in Dar in the afternoon. A hot bath, a laundry service and a proper rest before the island. Anything surplus to the coast can be left with the hotel. Dinner in Dar and an early night.

A scheduled light aircraft flight south from Dar es Salaam, usually touching down at Mafia Island en route, to the airstrip on Songo Songo around fifty minutes in the air. From the airstrip it is a short ride to the shoreline and then a crossing to Fanjove by dhow or speedboat, depending on tide and wind. You step off the boat into shallow water and wade ashore. There is no jetty and no other way to arrive. Fanjove is about a kilometre long, protected on its eastern side by an eleven kilometre reef, and shared by the guests and the lodge staff and nobody else. A nineteenth century German built lighthouse stands at one end. The first afternoon has nothing in it: swim, sleep, walk the beach at low tide when the reef flat is exposed and the whole shape of the island changes. Dinner looking at the water. After eleven nights in the interior the silence here is a different kind of silence.

Out by boat to the reef. These are among the healthiest and least visited reefs on the Tanzanian coast far quieter than anything within reach of Zanzibar with hard and soft coral, reef fish in numbers, turtles and rays. Snorkelling is also possible straight off the beach at the right state of the tide. At low water the sandbanks around the archipelago surface, and a dhow can drop you on one for an hour with nothing on it but your own footprints. Between roughly July and October humpback whales pass through these waters on migration, and dolphins are seen year round. Sunset from the lighthouse end of the island, then dinner on the beach.

A guided walk of the island’s nature trail. Fanjove is an important nesting site for green and hawksbill turtles, which come ashore between roughly April and July, and the lodge runs a monitoring programme on the nests. The island also holds a resident coconut crab population and takes large numbers of migrant birds passing down the coast. A boat across to Songo Songo, the main island of the archipelago, and an afternoon in the fishing village dhow building, seaweed farming, fish landing and the ordinary business of a Swahili island community. It is a straightforward and unglamorous visit and considerably more interesting for it. Back to Fanjove for the last of the light.

The last full day of a seventeen day journey, and there is deliberately nothing in it. Kayak, paddleboard, snorkel, fish, or do none of those things. The island is small enough to walk around in under an hour and quiet enough that most people do it more than once. A dhow sail for the sunset, which is the correct way to finish this journey: on the water, moving slowly, with the whole of the interior behind you. Final dinner on the sand. Sixteen nights, five places, and a route from the Empakaai forest to the Indian Ocean.

Boat transfer to Songo Songo and the scheduled light aircraft flight back to Dar es Salaam for your onward international connection. The service operates once daily and the routing is confirmed against the published schedule before departure. Seventeen days: the crater floor at midday, cheetah on the eastern plains, the Mara River, and a reef you had almost entirely to yourself.