15 Days Kenya and Tanzania Safari Holiday

Your guide meets you at your Nairobi hotel after breakfast and points the vehicle southeast. The drive to Tsavo East runs roughly five to six hours, with a stop or two to stretch and pick up water, and you should reach the park in good time for lunch at your lodge.

Tsavo East is big, open and dusty red, the kind of country that feels wild the moment you enter. Once you have settled in, you head out for your first afternoon game drive across the plains. This is famous elephant ground, and the herds here often wear a coat of red dust from rolling in the local soil. Watch too for lion, hippo along the Galana River, the occasional rhino, and a long list of birds along the water. Nothing is promised on any drive, but the dry season thins the bush and pulls animals toward the river, which works in your favour.

Dinner and your first night are at Voi Wildlife Lodge, which looks out over a busy waterhole.

After breakfast you transfer across to Tsavo West, watching for game along the way rather than rushing. Tsavo West is greener and more broken than its neighbour, with volcanic hills, old lava flows and thicker cover, so sightings take a little more patience and reward it.

You break for lunch at your next lodge, then spend the afternoon at Mzima Springs. Here clear spring water bubbles up through the lava and feeds a set of pools you can walk to on foot. Hippos and crocodiles laze in the deeper water, shoals of fish drift below the surface, and monkeys move through the fever trees along the bank. It is a calm, close look at wildlife that a game drive rarely gives you. Back out on the tracks you might find elephant, buffalo, giraffe and, if luck holds, one of the park's lions.

The evening meal and overnight are at Man Eaters Lodge, set beside the Tsavo River.

This morning you drive on to Amboseli, which sits close to the Tanzanian border at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. The transfer is scenic and steady, and you arrive at your lodge in time for lunch and a short rest through the heat of the day.

Amboseli is smaller than Tsavo but packs a lot into its swamps and open pans. In the afternoon you head out to explore the marshes fed by underground water from the mountain. These wet patches stay green when the plains around them turn dry, so they draw big numbers of animals. Look for elephant families wading belly deep, buffalo herds, and cheetah working the open ground, along with plenty of plains game. On a clear afternoon Kilimanjaro fills the southern sky and makes a fine backdrop for the elephants below.

You take dinner and settle in for the night at Sentrim Amboseli Camp.

Today is yours to enjoy Amboseli fully, with the mountain often at its clearest in the early light. You set out for an early morning drive when the air is cool and predators are still active, then return to camp for a proper breakfast.

Later you head out again with a packed lunch so you can stay in the park through the middle of the day. Amboseli is best known for its elephants, and here you can watch whole families cross the pans nose to tail, the little ones half hidden in dust. Around them graze zebra, wildebeest and giraffe, while hippo wallow in the swamps and lion rest in the shade. The flat, treeless plains make spotting easy, and the light on Kilimanjaro through the morning and again toward evening is worth putting the camera down for.

You return to camp in the late afternoon for dinner and a second night at Sentrim Amboseli Camp.

After breakfast you leave the plains and drive north toward the Great Rift Valley. It is a longer travel day, but the road climbs into the highlands and the valley opens up in wide views along the way, so there is plenty to look at from the window. You reach Lake Naivasha in time for lunch.

In the afternoon you visit nearby Hells Gate National Park, one of the few parks in Kenya you can explore on foot or by bike. Walking or cycling among zebra, buffalo, giraffe and gazelle, with no need to stay in a vehicle, is a nice change of pace. The park is named for its dramatic red cliffs and narrow gorge, and the towering rock formations give the place a scale that photographs never quite catch.

Your evening meal and bed are at Ziwa Bush Lodge, close to the lakeshore.

Today you make your way to the Masai Mara, the reserve most people picture when they think of an African safari. The drive descends and crosses the floor of the Rift Valley, and the last stretch runs on rougher roads, so allow most of the morning for it. You arrive at your camp and take lunch before the first game drive.

The Mara is open, rolling grassland cut by the Mara and Talek rivers, and it holds some of the densest big cat populations in Africa. On your afternoon drive you look for lion prides resting in the grass, elephant browsing the thickets, and cheetah scanning from a termite mound. Buffalo, topi, giraffe and countless gazelle fill in the plains. Sightings depend on the day and the season, but the sheer openness of the country means you can often watch animals from a long way off as they move.

Dinner and the night are at Sentrim Mara Camp.

With a full day in the reserve you can range far across the plains rather than sticking near camp. You start early, when the light is soft and the cats are still hunting, and carry lunch so you can stay out as long as the wildlife keeps you interested.

Between roughly July and September the Mara becomes the stage for the great wildebeest and zebra migration, when huge columns of animals pour across from the Serengeti and gather along the river crossings. Even outside those months the resident game is excellent: lion, elephant, buffalo, giraffe, hyena and the ever present herds of grazers. Your guide reads the ground and follows fresh tracks, and part of the pleasure is simply sitting with a pride or a lone cheetah and watching the day unfold. Crossings and kills can never be promised, but time and patience here usually pay off.

You come back to camp for dinner and spend a second night at Sentrim Mara Camp.

Another full day lets you explore corners of the reserve you have not yet reached, following the wildlife wherever the guide's experience leads. Mornings and late afternoons bring the best activity, so you plan your drives around the cool hours and rest a little in between.

Today also includes a visit to a local Maasai village, or manyatta, near the reserve. The Maasai have lived alongside this wildlife for generations, and a walk through the homestead gives you a plain, honest look at their daily life, their cattle, their houses built of mud and dung, and their singing and jumping dances. It is a chance to ask questions and understand how people and animals share this land. The rest of the day stays with the game, adding more lion, elephant and plains game to what you have already seen.

Your meals are taken at camp, and you overnight once more at Sentrim Mara Camp.

After an early breakfast you leave Kenya behind and drive to the Isebania border post, where you handle the crossing formalities into Tanzania. The road then carries you on toward the Serengeti, and you keep your eyes open for game along the way, since the country stays wild almost the whole distance.

Crossing into the Serengeti is a real shift in scale. The plains stretch flat to the horizon in every direction, broken only by rocky outcrops called kopjes where lion and leopard like to lie up. As you drive in you already start to see the first grazers, and your guide works toward camp with an eye out for early sightings. This is one of the oldest wildlife ranges on earth, and simply arriving on its edge in the low evening light sets the tone for the days ahead.

Dinner and your night are at Heritage Mara Camp or a similar tented camp in the area.

You have a full day to explore the Serengeti, and there is no better way to spend it than out among the herds from morning to evening. Setting off early gives you the cool hours when predators are on the move and the plains feel busiest.

The name means endless plains, and that is exactly how it looks. Lion are common here and often easy to find lazing in the open or up on the kopjes, and this is some of the best leopard and cheetah country in Africa, though both take patience and luck. Around the cats move great numbers of wildebeest, zebra, giraffe, elephant, hyena and gazelle. If your visit lines up with the migration, you may see the herds strung out for miles as they follow the rains. Nothing is guaranteed on the plains, which is part of why the good sightings feel earned.

You return to your tented camp for dinner and overnight.

A second full day lets you push into different parts of the park, from the river lines where big cats hunt to the open short grass where the herds spread out. Your guide plans the drives around where the wildlife has been moving, so no two days run quite the same.

This is the day to slow down and really watch: a pride with cubs at play, elephants stripping bark from an acacia, or vultures circling over a distant kill. Along the rivers you may find hippo pods and crocodile, and the birdlife across the plains is superb, from ostrich striding through the grass to eagles perched over the ground. With a full day in hand you are not rushing between sightings, and that time is what lets the Serengeti show you its best.

Meals and your night are again at the tented camp in the park.

This morning you turn southeast and drive out of the Serengeti toward the Ngorongoro highlands, with game viewing continuing as you go. The road climbs steadily from the hot plains into cooler, greener country, and you stop for lunch along the way.

In the afternoon you take a guided walk along the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater. From up here the whole caldera spreads out far below, its floor patched with grassland, forest and a shallow soda lake, and often dotted with animals you can just make out as specks. The walk gives you the lay of the land before tomorrow's descent, and the highland air, birds and montane plants make it a pleasant stretch of the legs after days in the vehicle. Your guide points out the flora and the geology that make this crater so unusual.

You take dinner and overnight at Karatu Tented Lodge, down in the farmland below the rim.

After an early breakfast you drive up to the rim and descend the steep track some six hundred metres to the crater floor for a full game drive. The Ngorongoro Crater holds one of the densest concentrations of wildlife anywhere, and it is one of the few places you have a genuine chance at all of the Big Five in a single morning: lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard and the rare black rhino.

Down on the floor you drive among grazing zebra and wildebeest, past buffalo herds and resident lion prides, while flamingos wash the shallow lake pink and hippo wallow in the pools. The walls of the crater rise all around, keeping the animals loosely contained and the viewing consistently good. After lunch on the floor you climb back out, and on the way you stop at a Maasai boma to see local customs, homes and daily life first hand.

You return to your lodge for dinner and the night.

After breakfast you make the short drive down to Lake Manyara National Park for a relaxed game drive through some of the most varied habitat of the whole trip. In a small area the park packs groundwater forest, open grassland, acacia woodland and the wide soda lake itself.

You enter through cool forest where baboon troops sit in the road and blue monkeys move overhead, then come out onto grassland grazed by buffalo, giraffe and elephant. Manyara is known for its tree climbing lions, which sometimes drape themselves along the branches of the acacias, though seeing them is always a matter of luck. Down at the lakeshore great flocks of flamingo and pelican gather in the shallows, and the birdlife right across the park is some of the richest in Tanzania. It is a fitting, gentle finish to the wildlife part of your holiday.

Dinner and your last safari night are at Twiga Lodge near the park.

Your final morning is unhurried and given over to people rather than wildlife. You explore the village of Mto wa Mbu, a lively farming town at the foot of the Rift Valley wall where many of Tanzania's ethnic groups live side by side. There is an option to cycle out through the banana and rice plantations, meet farmers and craftspeople, and see how the irrigated fields are worked.

It is a warm, human way to round off two weeks on the road, and a nice contrast to the wide open parks behind you. After the village visit and lunch, your guide drives you to the airport in good time for your onward flight. From here you can head straight home or continue to the coast for a few days on the beach.

Breakfast and lunch are included today, and the trip ends on your departure from Arusha.