10-Day Kenya & Tanzania Safari

The arrivals hall at Jomo Kenyatta International is the only formality: a greeting, the bags taken, and the drive into Nairobi to the hotel, with time to shower off the flight and let the body catch up with the clock.

A short briefing follows early in the evening, covering the route south, the vehicle, the timings and anything still to settle before the bush. The rest of the evening is free, and an early night is the sensible choice, because the Mara is a long drive away.

Not long out of Nairobi the ground falls away at the edge of the Great Rift Valley, and the escarpment viewpoint, with the valley floor spread out far below, is reason enough for the first stop. Past Narok the farmland thins, the tarmac narrows, and the long grass of the Maasai Mara begins.

Lunch is at Mara Sopa Lodge, around five and a half hours after leaving the city, and the first game drive follows in the afternoon. Lion, elephant, buffalo and giraffe are all common on that first outing, and the light only improves as the sun drops.

The reserve sets the timetable here, not the clock. The vehicle is out at first light, while the predators are still active in the cool, back at the lodge for lunch and a rest through the heat, and out again for the long evening light.

Between roughly July and October the guide positions the vehicle above the Mara River, where the wildebeest bunch on the bank, hesitate, and then pour across past the waiting crocodiles. Outside those months the day belongs to the big cats: the Mara holds one of the highest lion densities in Africa, and its cheetah hunt the open grass in daylight.

Two countries in one day. The morning leaves the Mara for the Isebania border post, where the paperwork is taken care of and passports are stamped into Tanzania, and then the land opens out again and the road runs on toward the Serengeti.

The last stretch to Serengeti Serena Safari Lodge doubles as a late afternoon game drive, so the first sight of the Serengeti comes with animals already on it. A long day, and a rewarding one: two of Africa's greatest parks between a single sunrise and sunset.

The Serengeti is roughly the size of Northern Ireland, and where the herds stand on any given morning depends entirely on the month. So the day begins with the guide checking reports from the ranger network and planning the route around them, which is why this day is kept deliberately loose.

Cheetah work the short grass plains, leopard rest along the rivers in the shade, and the granite kopjes give the lions a lookout over everything. A second night at the same lodge means no packing, and a start at dawn with no drive to get there.

The morning crosses the last of the plains and climbs toward the Ngorongoro highlands, grassland giving way to forest and, often, to cloud on the rim. Then the road tips over the edge and down into the crater itself, a caldera some 2,000 feet deep whose floor holds one of the densest concentrations of wildlife on earth.

Lion, buffalo, zebra, hippo in the pools, and the last sizeable population of black rhino in East Africa all share that one enclosed bowl. Game viewing runs until late in the day, and then the road climbs back to Ngorongoro Sopa Lodge on the rim, where the evening air turns cold at that altitude.

After the intensity of the crater, the morning runs at an easier pace. There is an optional village visit on the way down from the highlands, and then a short drive to Lake Manyara National Park, laid out beneath the wall of the Rift Valley escarpment.

The park opens through a groundwater forest of tall fig and mahogany, where baboon troops cross the track and the famous tree climbing lions are sometimes found stretched along a branch. In the right months the shallows of the lake turn pink with flamingos. The day ends at Lake Manyara's Secret, looking back over the escarpment.

Tarangire is the sleeper hit of northern Tanzania, and the first sight of it explains why: enormous baobabs, many centuries old, standing over grass that elephants cross in long single files. Through the dry months, June to October, the herds gather along the Tarangire River in numbers that surprise almost everyone who sees them.

After lunch the road runs back to Arusha, and the evening is free.

Nothing is fixed for this day, and that is deliberate. A coffee farm tour and waterfall walk on the green lower slopes of Kilimanjaro is one option, a cultural visit to a Maasai or Chagga village another, and a slow day beside the pool a perfectly good third.

For anyone not ready to go home, a two hour flight reaches Zanzibar for a few days on the beach before the flight back. Tell us which appeals and we will price it in.

A final breakfast, and then the transfer to Kilimanjaro International Airport, or to the domestic terminal in Arusha for anyone flying on within Tanzania. With a late flight, the room is held, so the hours before it are not spent waiting in a lobby. The schedule bends to the departure time, not the other way round.