7-Day Northern Wilderness & Walking Safari

A morning pickup in Arusha and the drive south into Tarangire, continuing past the busy northern loop into the quieter southern sector where the baobab country opens out and the vehicles thin to almost none. The afternoon game drive targets the elephant herds, the resident lions and the park's exceptional raptors.

The southern sector is why this itinerary exists. Most Tarangire day visitors never get more than a few kilometres past the gate, which leaves the whole southern half of the park (swamps, river and the best of the baobab country), effectively empty. Oliver's Camp sits out in it, in a concession where walking is permitted.

A morning walking safari with an armed park ranger, tracking on foot through riverine forest and open acacia savannah at the pace walking demands. The afternoon returns to the vehicle for birding and a game drive along the Tarangire River.

Combining the two is the sensible approach. Walking gives you the detail (tracks, dung, the smell of an elephant that passed an hour ago, dwarf mongoose living inside a termite mound) while the vehicle gives you range and reaches the concentrations of game along the river. Neither on its own shows you the park properly.

Away after breakfast and west through the Ngorongoro Highlands, climbing into cool cultivated country before dropping out the far side onto the Serengeti plains. You game drive the last section through Naabi Hill Gate and into the Seronera Valley, arriving at camp in the afternoon.

Naabi Hill Gate is the moment everyone remembers. You have been driving through highlands and scrub for hours, and then the country simply opens, grass to the horizon in every direction with the kopjes standing out of it like islands. It is worth stopping at the gate and walking up the hill for the view.

A full day working the Seronera Valley and the granite kopjes: big cats hunting in the early hours, leopard along the riverine acacias, and the herbivore herds that support all of it. Lunch is a picnic in the bush somewhere with shade and a view.

Kopjes are the key to reading this landscape. These granite outcrops predate the surrounding plain by hundreds of millions of years and were left standing as softer rock eroded away around them. They collect rainwater, hold shade and give a commanding view, which is why lion use them constantly, and why your guide checks every significant one.

An early sunrise game drive across the plains while the light is low and the cats are still active, then breakfast and the long drive east out of the park and up into the highlands. You reach the crater rim area in the afternoon, into cool air and cultivated green country after days of open plain.

Gibb's Farm is a working coffee and vegetable farm as much as a lodge, set on the outer slopes below the rim. Almost everything on the dinner table comes out of the garden, and after days of camp catering that is a genuine pleasure. The forest above the farm is used by elephant and buffalo moving between the highlands and the crater.

A descent 600 metres down the crater wall for a full six hours on the floor. The targets are the crater's black rhino (one of the last viable populations in northern Tanzania) along with the resident lion prides and the flamingos on Lake Magadi. A hot picnic lunch is served by the hippo pool.

Six hours is considerably more than the standard crater visit, and it changes what you see. Most vehicles come down, do a circuit and leave by early afternoon; staying longer means you are still there as the day cools, the light softens, and the predators that have been lying up in the Lerai forest begin to move again.

A morning game drive in Lake Manyara, entering through the groundwater forest with its baboon colonies (among the largest in Africa), and coming out onto the floodplain and lakeshore. Tree-climbing lions are the park's speciality and always worth scanning the acacias for. Then the drive back east to Arusha for your departure flight.

Manyara makes a good closing park because it returns you to a human scale. After the Serengeti's horizons and the crater's sheer density, a small forested park where the interest lies in detail (a troop of baboons, a hornbill, hippo grunting in a pool), is a gentler way to finish.