4-Day Tarangire & Ngorongoro Big Five · Camping Safari

Met at Kilimanjaro International and driven straight south to Tarangire, arriving in time for an afternoon game drive. Camp is inside the park at the public campsite, where your cook has dinner going by the time you get back from the drive.

Getting into a park on day one is what makes four days work. There is no wasted night in a town hotel. You land, you drive, and by late afternoon you are watching elephant herds move between baobabs. The camping means the whole thing costs a fraction of the lodge equivalent without changing a single thing about the wildlife you see.

A full day working Tarangire's different habitats: river valley, open woodland, and the drier scrub further out. Leopard are here for those who look carefully in the trees, the elephant families are the largest on the circuit, and the birdlife is relentless. Picnic lunch in the park, then in the late afternoon you drive out to Mto wa Mbu to camp.

Mto wa Mbu means river of mosquitoes, which rather undersells it. The town sits at the foot of the Rift Valley escarpment where irrigation off the highlands makes everything grow, and it is one of the most ethnically mixed places in Tanzania: well over a hundred groups farming rice, bananas and vegetables side by side.

A short, scenic drive up the escarpment into the highland farming country around Karatu, with the Rift Valley dropping away behind you. The afternoon is at leisure (a walk into town, a coffee farm visit, or simply resting at camp) because tomorrow starts very early.

The climb from Mto wa Mbu to Karatu is one of the more dramatic short drives in the country. In a few kilometres you go from hot valley floor at 1,000 metres to cool green highlands at 1,500, the road switchbacking up the escarpment with the whole of Lake Manyara laid out behind you every time you look back.

You are on the descent road early, dropping to the crater floor for a half-day game drive while the light is still low and the animals are still moving. Lion, wildebeest, zebra and buffalo are everywhere; black rhino are the prize, and the early hours give you the best chance at them. Picnic lunch by the hippo pool, then you climb out and drive back to Arusha for your departure.

The crater is the collapsed caldera of a volcano that once stood higher than Kilimanjaro, and its 600-metre walls now hold in one of the densest wildlife populations on earth. It is a fitting end to a budget camping safari. The crater does not care what you paid for your bed.