7-Day Safari with Lake Eyasi Hadzabe & Datoga Visit

After breakfast you drive for two to three hours to Tarangire National Park. The game drive takes you among baobab trees and some of the biggest elephant herds in the country, with lion, giraffe and zebra also common, and a picnic lunch in the park. In the afternoon you leave the park and drive to Kankari Lodge on the edge of Karatu, in the green highlands between Lake Manyara and the Ngorongoro Crater, for dinner and the night.

Lake Manyara is only 30 to 45 minutes away, so you can be in the park early. Your game drive runs from the groundwater forest, busy with baboons and blue monkeys, to the soda lake with its flamingos and pelicans, and your guide will check the acacias for the park's tree-climbing lions. Lunch is a picnic in the park. In the late afternoon you return to Karatu and check in at Eileen's Trees Inn, where you stay on full board for two nights.

Today you drive two to three hours to Lake Eyasi, a long soda lake below the Rift Valley wall. This is the home of the Hadzabe, one of the last hunter-gatherer peoples in Africa, and of the Datoga, pastoralists known for their brass jewellery and metalwork. You can walk with Hadzabe men as they track game with bows and arrows, and watch Datoga smiths turn scrap metal into arrowheads and bracelets. You return to Eileen's Trees Inn in Karatu for the night.

After breakfast it is about an hour from Karatu to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. You descend into the crater for a game drive and a picnic lunch on the floor, looking for the Big Five, cheetah, hyena and hippo. In the afternoon you climb out and continue across the plains into the Serengeti. It is a long day, and you arrive in the evening at Africa Safari Serengeti Ikoma, a tented camp near the park's Ikoma Gate, for dinner.

A whole day on the Serengeti plains, with a picnic lunch so you can go wherever the wildlife is. Your guide will look for the lion prides and cheetahs, and explain how the animals and the ecosystem work as you go. Depending on the season you may also meet the wildebeest and zebra herds of the Great Migration, and giraffe, elephant and buffalo are here all year. In the evening you return to your camp at Ikoma for dinner.

Set out early for a last game drive, when predators are most active and the grazing herds are on the move. After that you begin the long drive back to Arusha, crossing the Ngorongoro highlands and descending past Karatu and Mto wa Mbu. You arrive in Arusha in the late afternoon or early evening, in time to continue your travels or head on to your next destination.