This is a longer, slower version of our Kenya and Tanzania combined safari, with two full days in each major park instead of one. You get more time to wait out slow mornings, follow a sighting longer, or simply rest between game drives. The route runs from the Maasai Mara through Kenya’s Rift Valley parks, across the border into Tanzania, and finishes in the Serengeti, Tarangire and Lake Manyara before returning to Nairobi.
After breakfast, you head west to the Maasai Mara, Kenya’s best-known reserve. You check in at your lodge in time for lunch, then head out at 16:00 for your first game drive. Well over 450 species of animals have been recorded here, including resident wildlife year round and the migrating wildebeest and zebra that pass through between July and September. Dinner and overnight at your lodge.
Game drives run at 06:30 and 16:00, with lunch and rest at the lodge in between. Meals and overnight at your lodge.
After breakfast, you drive north to Lake Nakuru National Park, arriving in time for lunch. The park is fenced and protects a sizeable population of both black and white rhino, along with Rothschild’s giraffe, lion, leopard and waterbuck. Its lake also draws large numbers of flamingos and other birdlife. An afternoon game drive follows. Dinner and overnight at your lodge.
After breakfast, you begin the long drive south to Amboseli, with lunch on the way. You arrive in the late afternoon for an evening game drive. Amboseli sits at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, and its swamps hold some of the largest and best-studied elephant herds in Africa, along with lion, cheetah, buffalo and plenty of plains game. Dinner and overnight at your lodge.
Game drives run at 06:30 and 16:00, giving you a full day to explore the park in search of elephant, lion, cheetah, buffalo and Maasai giraffe, with Mount Kilimanjaro often visible in the background when the sky is clear. Dinner and overnight at your lodge.
After an early breakfast, you take a short game drive before crossing the border at Namanga and driving on to Arusha for lunch. In the afternoon you continue to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Its central feature, the Ngorongoro Crater, is one of the largest intact volcanic calderas in the world and holds one of the densest predator populations in Africa, including elephant, lion, zebra and wildebeest. Nearby Olduvai Gorge is where some of Africa’s oldest hominid fossils were discovered. Dinner and overnight at your lodge.
Morning and afternoon game drives take you down onto the crater floor, one of the best places in Africa to find the black rhino, alongside lion, elephant, zebra, wildebeest, hyena and both Grant’s and Thomson’s gazelle. Meals and overnight at your lodge.
After breakfast, you drive to the Serengeti, Africa’s most famous game reserve. Wildebeest are the most numerous animal here, followed by zebra, and cheetah and the other big cats are regularly seen on the open plains. Elephant and buffalo numbers have grown strongly in recent decades after a difficult period during the poaching crisis of the 1980s, and the park’s small remaining population of black rhino is concentrated around the Moru Kopjes area. You arrive in time for lunch, with an afternoon game drive to follow. Dinner and overnight at your camp.
Morning and afternoon game drives explore different parts of the park. Meals and overnight at your lodge.
After breakfast, you drive to Tarangire National Park, arriving in time for lunch. An afternoon game drive follows. Dinner and overnight at your lodge.
Morning and afternoon game drives cover Tarangire’s baobab-dotted landscape, known for its elephant herds and its lions and leopards, which sometimes rest in the branches of sausage trees. Meals and overnight at your lodge.
After breakfast, you drive to Lake Manyara National Park, arriving in time for lunch. An afternoon game drive follows, with a chance to see the park’s varied wildlife, from its groundwater forest monkeys to the birdlife along its alkaline lake. Dinner and overnight at your lodge.
Morning and afternoon game drives cover the park’s forest, lake and grassland habitats, with a chance, though no guarantee, of spotting Manyara’s tree-climbing lions. Meals and overnight at your lodge.
After an early morning game drive, you continue to Arusha for lunch, then take the afternoon drive back across the border to Nairobi, with drop-off at your hotel or the airport depending on your onward flight.
Safari rates change with the season, number of travellers and available accommodation.
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