7-Days Touch of Wilderness Luxury Safari

You're welcomed on arrival at Kilimanjaro International Airport and transferred to Arusha, your springboard into the northern safari circuit. The green season brings noticeably fewer travelers through the city at this time of year, so it's a relaxed start before the safari itself begins the next morning.
 

After being picked up from your hotel in Arusha, you transfer to Tarangire National Park, home to some of Tanzania's oldest and largest baobab trees and resident elephant herds that stay in the park year-round. The park is markedly greener and quieter at this time of year, with fewer vehicles sharing the tracks. You settle in at EcoScience Tented Camp for dinner and overnight.
 

You head into Lake Manyara National Park for a game drive through its dense groundwater forest, searching out the park's tree-climbing lions and the dense birdlife drawn to the lake shore, especially active during the wetter months. After lunch, you transfer to your lodge in Karatu for the rest of the afternoon, settling in for dinner and overnight at Ngorongoro Farm House.
 

An early start takes you down into the Ngorongoro Crater for a morning game drive. Nearly three million years old, this ancient volcanic caldera is ringed by towering walls and shelters forests, grasslands, fresh springs and a large soda lake within its rim, all supporting a dense concentration of wildlife. After lunch, you continue toward the Serengeti, with a game drive along the way as you make the gradual journey to Cherero Camp, roughly two hours from the hub of the Serengeti depending on road conditions, which can be softer during the rains. Dinner and overnight at Cherero Camp.
 

An optional early morning hot air balloon ride over the Serengeti plains is available today at an additional cost of US$600 per person, with advance booking required, though flights during this period are more weather dependent and may be rescheduled if conditions aren't suitable. On the ground, you spend the day on morning and afternoon game drives through Central and Western Serengeti, where the migrating herds are often passing through at this time of year on their way toward the Western Corridor. The park's famous big five, lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo, share the landscape with hundreds of smaller, equally striking species, from lilac-breasted rollers to Charaxes butterflies and the umbrella thorn acacia trees scattered across the plains.
 

You spend a second full day exploring Central and Western Serengeti with morning and afternoon game drives. With the migration often moving through this part of the park during April and May, there's a good chance of encountering large herds of wildebeest and zebra on the move, alongside the resident predators that follow them.
 

After breakfast, you bid farewell to the team at Cherero Camp and enjoy a final game drive on the way to Seronera Airstrip for your morning departure flight. You fly back to Arusha, where lunch is available at your own expense, before a 90-minute road transfer to Kilimanjaro International Airport for your onward or international flight. If you'd like to extend your trip with time in Zanzibar, this can be arranged as well.