11-Day Kilimanjaro Lemosho Climb + Safari Combo

Met at Kilimanjaro International and transferred to your lodge in Moshi. The afternoon is the gear check (your head guide works through your kit item by item, and anything missing or unsuitable can be hired in town), followed by a full briefing on the climb ahead.

This is an ambitious trip: seven days on the mountain followed immediately by a safari. It works, and people love it, but it is worth knowing what you have signed up for. You will summit Africa's highest peak and then, forty-eight hours later, be watching elephants in Tarangire. Very few itineraries cover that much ground.

A long drive around to Londorossi Gate on the western side of the mountain for registration and the porter weigh-in, then into the montane forest. The first day's walking is under dense wet canopy, loud with birds and dripping regardless of season, climbing steadily out onto the plateau at Shira 1 Camp, 3,500 metres.

Lemosho's western approach is the quietest start on Kilimanjaro and the forest here is genuinely undisturbed. Take the guides' pace seriously from the very first hour: pole pole, slowly slowly. Walking too fast in the first two days is the most common reason people struggle at the top.

A gentle crossing of the Shira Plateau, open moorland underfoot with Kibo's dome directly ahead all day, arriving at Shira 2 Camp at 3,900 metres by early afternoon. It is an easy day by design, with the rest of the afternoon for resting.

You are walking across the floor of an extinct volcano. The Shira Plateau is what remains of Kilimanjaro's oldest cone, which collapsed and was later flooded with lava from Kibo. Days like this feel unproductive and are anything but, at just under 4,000 metres, the unhurried pace is what makes the summit possible.

The key acclimatisation day. You climb to the Lava Tower at 4,630 metres, a huge plug of solidified magma where a hot lunch is served, then descend to Barranco Camp at 3,960 metres to sleep: ending the day at roughly the altitude you started, having spent hours a great deal higher.

Many people feel distinctly rough at Lava Tower and noticeably better at Barranco, which is the day doing exactly what it is meant to. Barranco itself is one of the most striking camps on the mountain, set among giant groundsels (tree-sized plants found nowhere else on earth), directly beneath the Barranco Wall.

The day begins with the Barranco Wall rising straight out of camp, a 250-metre scramble that looks impossible from below and turns out to need hands rather than ropes. Most people finish it grinning. Beyond it the trail rolls through a series of valleys to Karanga Camp at 3,995 metres, with the afternoon free.

The view from the top of the Wall is the best on the route: straight up at Kibo's southern glaciers, with the plains of Tanzania stretching away behind you. Watch the porters come up it with loads balanced on their heads; it recalibrates any sense you might have that you are doing something difficult.

A steady climb across increasingly barren ground to Barafu Camp at 4,673 metres, where vegetation stops entirely and the mountain becomes rock and wind. You arrive early in the afternoon, and the remainder of the day is rest, fluids, an early dinner and an attempt at sleep before a midnight start.

Barafu means ice in Swahili and the camp lives up to it. Lay out everything you need for the night before dark: layers in the order you will put them on, head torch with fresh batteries, water insulated so it does not freeze solid, snacks in a reachable pocket. At eleven o'clock in that cold you want nothing left to decide.

A midnight start, climbing scree by head torch in serious cold at a pace that feels absurdly slow and is exactly correct. You reach the crater rim around sunrise and continue to Uhuru Peak at 5,895 metres, the highest point in Africa. Photographs, then a long descent to Mweka Camp at 3,100 metres.

Summit day runs to something like fourteen hours of walking, with a descent of more than 2,500 metres after the climb. It is the hardest thing most people who attempt it have ever done. It is also the day they will describe to anyone who asks about this trip for the rest of their lives.

A final descent through the rainforest to Mweka Gate at 1,640 metres, where summit certificates are issued and you tip and say goodbye to the mountain crew. Then a transfer west to Arusha, a hot shower, and a welcome dinner with your safari guide: a different person, a different vehicle, and an entirely different week ahead.

The transition is abrupt and rather wonderful. You wake up on the side of Kilimanjaro and go to bed in Arusha having handed in your boots for a seat in a safari cruiser. Sleep well tonight; after seven nights in a tent above 3,000 metres, a proper bed at 1,400 metres tends to produce the best sleep of the whole trip.

South to Tarangire for a morning game drive among the baobabs and the elephant herds the park is famous for, then the drive up through the highlands to the Ngorongoro crater rim. The afternoon is at leisure, which here means sitting with a view down into the caldera.

After a week of watching your own feet on scree, a game drive is a completely different kind of attention: scanning, waiting, letting a guide point things out. Tarangire is a generous place to start: the elephants are unmissable, the baobabs are extraordinary, and the park's bird list runs past 550 species.

An early descent 600 metres down the crater wall for a half-day safari on the floor. The density here is unmatched, around 25,000 large animals in 260 square kilometres, with lion, elephant, buffalo, hyena and flamingo near-certain and black rhino the one to hope for. Picnic lunch by the hippo pool, then you climb out and drive on to the Serengeti for the night.

Standing on the crater rim eight days after standing on Uhuru Peak is a strange and rather good feeling. You have now seen Tanzania from its highest point and from the floor of its most famous caldera, which is about as complete a picture of this country's landscape as anyone gets in eleven days.

A last morning game drive across the Serengeti plains before the flight or drive back to Arusha. The Serengeti has a habit of saving something for the final morning, so this is not a drive to skip. From Arusha it is the airport, or a transfer on to Zanzibar if you are extending.

Eleven days taking in the summit of Kilimanjaro, the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti is a very full trip by any standard. Most people who do this combination say the same thing afterwards: the climb was the achievement, but the safari was what made it a holiday.