4-Day Tarangire, Serengeti and Ngorongoro Luxury Safari

You'll leave Arusha after breakfast for the drive south to Tarangire National Park, a journey of around two and a half hours through farmland and open acacia country as the Rift Valley escarpment recedes behind you. Your guide will point out the baobabs that dominate this landscape, some centuries old, before you enter the park gates in time for lunch at Tarangire Safari Lodge, set on a bluff above the Tarangire River.

The afternoon is given over to a game drive along the river itself, where Tarangire's famously large elephant herds gather even in the dry months, digging in the riverbed for water. Look out too for the odd baobab-studded ridgelines that give this park its distinctive silhouette, along with giraffe, waterbuck and, if the light holds, lion resting in the long grass as the afternoon cools.

An early game drive around Tarangire Safari Lodge gives you a last look at the river valley before breakfast, after which you'll set off west for the Serengeti. The route climbs through the Ngorongoro highlands and past Karatu's coffee farms before descending onto the open plains, a drive of six to seven hours broken by a picnic lunch en route. The changing terrain, from Tarangire's dense bush to the short grass plains, is worth watching from the window as much as any single sighting.

You'll reach Serengeti Serena in the late afternoon, in time for an orientation game drive through the surrounding Seronera area before checking in. Wide horizons and long views define this stretch of the park, and your guide will use the last hour of light to look for resident lion prides and grazing herds of topi and Thomson's gazelle near the lodge.

With the whole day free for exploration, you'll set out after an early breakfast for a full morning game drive through the Seronera valley, where rocky kopjes rise out of the grassland and often shelter resting lion or leopard draped over the boulders. Your guide will track fresh signs and radio other vehicles for sightings, and depending on the season you may encounter large concentrations of wildebeest and zebra moving across the plains as part of the annual migration.

You'll return to Serengeti Serena for lunch and a break through the heat of the day, before heading out again in the late afternoon when the light turns golden and animals become active once more. Cheetah are a particular possibility on the open plains at this hour, and your guide will time the drive to be back at the lodge as the sun sets over the grassland.

You'll leave the Serengeti after an early breakfast for the drive back across the plains and up into the Ngorongoro highlands, arriving at the crater rim by mid-morning. From here your vehicle descends around six hundred metres down the crater wall onto the floor, where the temperature rises and the terrain opens into grassland, swamp and a soda lake at its centre, all enclosed within the unbroken caldera walls.

The crater floor holds an unusually dense concentration of wildlife in a confined space, and your guide will spend the next few hours searching among the grazing herds and swamp margins for lion, hyena, and the black rhino that still survive here, alongside flamingo gathered on the lake shallows. After a picnic lunch on the crater floor, you'll climb back out to the rim for the drive down to Arusha, arriving in the early evening to conclude the safari.