6-Day Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater & Lake Manyara Safari

After an early breakfast you head west, climbing into the Ngorongoro highlands and stopping at the rim viewpoint for your first look into the crater. The road then drops through Maasai grazing land onto the short-grass plains and into Serengeti National Park, where you stop for lunch. The afternoon is your first Serengeti game drive, looking for lion, cheetah and the big herds of plains game, before you reach your lodge or tented camp inside the park.

Today is yours to spend on the plains, with a packed lunch so you can stay out all day. Your guide will look for the wildebeest herds and the predators that follow them, and for the Serengeti's resident lions, cheetahs, elephants and giraffes. Where the herds are depends on the month: they pass through the central Serengeti roughly from April to June and again in November and December, and at other times your guide heads for the best of the resident game.

After breakfast you leave the Serengeti and stop at Olduvai Gorge, where a small museum and viewpoint tell the story of the early human fossils found here. You reach the Ngorongoro Conservation Area around lunchtime and then descend into the crater for an afternoon game drive. The caldera is home to all of the Big Five, and it is one of the few places in Tanzania where you have a good chance of seeing black rhino. You spend the night on the crater rim.

After breakfast you drive down off the highlands to Lake Manyara National Park, at the foot of the Rift Valley escarpment. A morning game drive takes you through groundwater forest full of baboons and blue monkeys, and out to the lakeshore, where flocks of flamingos gather when the water is right. After lunch there is a second game drive, with another chance to find the park's tree-climbing lions, before you settle into your lodge or tented camp for the night.

After a relaxed breakfast you drive back to Arusha, about two hours away. There is time on the way for a stop at the craft stalls of Mto wa Mbu or a short visit to a local village, if you would like one. You reach Arusha in the afternoon, and from there we transfer you to Kilimanjaro International Airport for your flight home, or to your hotel if you are staying on.