4-Day Tarangire, Serengeti and Ngorongoro Camping Safari

You'll leave Arusha after breakfast, the drive taking around two and a half hours as the road climbs past Mount Meru's lower slopes before dropping into the dry acacia country around Tarangire. Once through the park gate you'll head straight into an afternoon game drive along the Tarangire River, where the region's famously large elephant herds gather to drink and bathe, often thirty or forty strong. The riverine woodland here is thick with ancient baobabs, and you'll watch for giraffe, impala and the tree-climbing lions the park is known for.

Your camp for the night is set up at an authorised campsite within or on the edge of the park, tents and a full mess setup ready on arrival. Your cook prepares dinner over an open fire while you listen for the grunt of hippos or a distant lion roar carrying across the bush.

An early game drive gives you a last look at Tarangire before checkout, with a good chance of spotting elephant family groups moving between the swamps at Silale as the morning cools. After breakfast at camp you'll break camp and set off on the long drive west, skirting Lake Manyara's escarpment and crossing the highland farmland around Karatu before dropping onto the open plains of the Serengeti, roughly five to six hours of driving in total with a stop for lunch en route.

Entering through the Naabi Hill gate, you'll get your first sense of the Serengeti's scale, grassland running flat to the horizon in every direction. A short afternoon game drive on the approach to camp brings you into contact with the resident wildlife, zebra, topi and gazelle are common here, with predators never far behind. You'll camp inside the park at a public or special campsite, canvas walls the only thing between you and the plains at night.

You'll have a full day to explore the Serengeti's central Seronera area, known for its year-round resident game and a strong concentration of predators. Morning and afternoon drives take you through riverine woodland along the Seronera River, prime territory for leopard resting up in the sausage trees, and out onto the open plains where lion prides hold territory and cheetah use termite mounds as lookout points. Your guide will read the terrain for tracks and fresh kills, and time permitting will push out toward whichever area is holding the most activity that day.

Depending on the season you may also come across large numbers of wildebeest and zebra moving through the area as part of their annual migration cycle. You'll return to camp for meals prepared by your cook, with the afternoon light turning the grass gold as you head back in before dusk.

You'll break camp early and drive out of the Serengeti toward the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, climbing back up through Karatu's farmland to the crater rim, a journey of around three hours. From the rim, at over 2,200 metres, you'll descend the steep access road onto the crater floor for a half-day game drive across one of Africa's densest concentrations of wildlife packed into a single caldera. Black rhino, elephant, buffalo and dense lion prides are all resident here, and the alkaline waters of Lake Magadi usually draw flamingos and other waterbirds along its shallow margins.

After lunch on the crater floor you'll climb back up to the rim and begin the drive out to Arusha, roughly four to five hours depending on road conditions, arriving in the late afternoon or early evening to conclude the safari.