From the Serengeti to Zanzibar: all the destinations on our routes with their wildlife, best time to travel and matching safaris. The tiles lead to each page.
Anyone going on safari in Tanzania can hardly avoid Arusha: our routes start and finish here, and this is where the vehicles set off for Tarangire and the Serengeti. The city itself has around 600,000 inhabitants and lies at the foot of Mount Meru, roughly halfway between Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti.
A national park next door: around half an hour beyond Arusha, montane cloud forest begins, where black-and-white colobus monkeys clamber about; flamingos stand in the Momella Lakes, and Mount Meru towers above it all. Predators such as leopards and spotted hyenas show themselves here only occasionally, and on a guided walking safari you can even explore the park on foot: anyone who has come face to face with a giraffe this way is still talking about it years later.
Karatu is the small town where many safari guests sleep without knowing its name: it lies in the highlands between Lake Manyara and the Ngorongoro Crater, among coffee plantations, wheat fields and strikingly red earth. Stay the night here and you will be at the crater rim after a short drive the next morning, with time the evening before for a stroll through the plantations or a freshly roasted coffee.
Below the roughly 400-metre-high escarpment of the Rift Valley lies Lake Manyara, around two hours' drive west of Arusha. A shallow soda lake takes up most of the park, while along its shores groundwater forest, acacias and grassland alternate. One day is enough for the whole park, and it will not be a dull one.
Mto wa Mbu lies right at the gate to Lake Manyara National Park, between banana groves and rice fields, and is surprisingly diverse for a place of its size: people from many regions of Tanzania live here together. On a village walk or a bike tour you see the fields, the market and everyday life, try local food and, if you like, a banana beer too. After all, a safari also raises the question of how people actually live between the parks.
Mwanza is Tanzania's port city on Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa, and the huge granite boulders on its shores have earned it the nickname “Rock City”. The best-known of them, Bismarck Rock, balances in the water just off the harbour. On our routes Mwanza appears mainly as a stopover, because if you end a fly-in safari on Zanzibar, you fly back via the city. And from here the road leads to the Ndabaka Gate, the lesser-known western approach to the Serengeti.
Ndutu lies in the south of the Serengeti ecosystem, within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and has a fixed place in the calendar of the Great Migration. From December to March the herds are here, and in February the calving season reaches its peak. On some days, thousands of wildebeest calves are then born on the short-grass plains, and cheetahs, lions and hyenas are rarely far away. Ndutu is not included in the fixed routes; for the calving season we put together a tailor-made route for you.
Around 260 square kilometres of crater floor, surrounded by walls of about 500 metres, and inside live some 25,000 larger animals. The Big Five included. The Ngorongoro Crater is considered the largest intact caldera in the world.
The north of the Serengeti is hillier, greener and much emptier than the centre, and it has the Mara River. When tens of thousands of wildebeest gather on the steep banks there from July to September, hesitate and finally plunge in among the crocodiles, that is the moment many people make the long journey for. The north is worth it even without the herds: resident wildlife, hardly any vehicles, plenty of peace and quiet. It does not fit into our fixed routes, but it does fit into an individually planned one.
The Maasai call it “the endless plain”, and anyone driving across the grassland of north-western Tanzania for the first time understands why straight away. The national park covers almost 15,000 square kilometres, nearly the size of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981.
Serval Wildlife is a private sanctuary where rangers and keepers take in orphaned and injured wild animals. On a guided tour they tell you about their work, and you get closer to the animals than would ever be possible in a national park. You can add the visit with us as an activity, as a stopover on your safari route; whether it fits your route is something we clarify in your quote.
Around two hours' drive south-west of Arusha lies Tarangire: 2,850 square kilometres of savannah, bushland and baobabs. In the dry season the Tarangire River becomes the most important water source in the region, and the elephants arrive in herds of several hundred animals.
Around 80 minutes' flight from Arusha, and you are standing on the shores of the Indian Ocean. Zanzibar is the classic way to wind down after a safari: Stone Town with its narrow alleys (a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000), spice farms in the island's interior and coral reefs off the coast.
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