5 Day Serengeti & Ngorongoro Migration Safari Tanzania

Your safari in Tanzania begins in Arusha, either after breakfast at your hotel or on arrival at the airport. Your guide meets you for a short briefing to run through the days ahead, then you board a light aircraft for the flight down to Ndutu. The flight saves a long drive and gives you a first look at the plains from the air.

Ndutu sits in the southern reaches of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, on the short grass plains that mark the southern edge of the Serengeti. You settle into Ndutu Safari Lodge, then head out for an afternoon game drive across the open country. This is prime calving ground from around December into April, so at that time of year the plains can be thick with wildebeest and their newborns.

Even outside the calving season the area holds plenty, with herds of eland, waterbuck, buffalo, and elephant grazing while resident lions, cheetahs, and hyenas keep watch nearby. Nothing is promised, but the plains rarely feel empty. You return at dusk for dinner and spend the night at the lodge.

You start early today with breakfast and a packed lunch, then set off on a full day drive that slowly works north toward the central Serengeti. The whole day is spent among the migration, so there is no hurry to reach the next camp. You go where the herds are and let the day unfold around them.

In the calving months the southern grounds are alive with newborn wildebeest taking their first shaky steps, and the predators are never far off. Lions, cheetahs, hyenas, and jackals shadow the herds, waiting for a chance, and the tension out on the plains is constant. You stop for a bush picnic under an acacia before carrying on north.

As the day goes on the short grass gives way to the classic Serengeti of longer grass and scattered kopjes. You cross into Serengeti National Park proper and reach Serengeti Serena Safari Lodge as the sun drops. Dinner is served there, and that is where you rest for the night.

Today is a full day out on the wide plains of the central Serengeti, a park so large it takes real time to cross. You spend the hours ranging across grassland and around the rocky kopjes that break up the horizon, checking the shaded ledges where the big cats like to lie up during the heat of the day.

This is classic Big Five country. Watch for lions and leopards, buffalo and elephant moving through the grass, and, with luck, the shy black rhino. Graceful impala gather near the kopjes, giraffes browse the taller trees, and the plains carry zebra and gazelle in every direction. Your guide knows where the resident prides and cheetahs tend to be found.

You take a picnic lunch out in the bush so you can stay in the field through the middle of the day, then keep watching into the golden light of the afternoon. The central Serengeti holds game all year, so this day rarely disappoints, even if a particular sighting can never be guaranteed. Dinner and the night are again at Serengeti Serena Safari Lodge.

You make the most of the morning with a dawn game drive before breakfast, when the plains are cool and the animals are active. After eating you enjoy one last picnic in the park, then begin the scenic drive of around seventy five kilometres up to the Ngorongoro Crater rim, which takes roughly two and a half hours.

The drive is a game drive in its own right. As you leave the plains behind, keep an eye out for giraffes, warthogs, and hornbills along the way, with the odd herd still lingering on the grass before the land begins to climb. The country slowly changes from open savannah to cooler, greener highland slopes.

You reach Ngorongoro Serena Lodge, perched on the crater rim, in time to settle in before dinner. From up here the whole caldera opens out far below, its lake glinting and tiny dark shapes moving on the floor that you will meet up close tomorrow. Dinner is served at the lodge, and you spend the night on the rim.

You rise early for a descent onto the crater floor at around half past six, when the air is crisp and the animals are on the move. Dropping into this closed bowl feels like entering a lost world, ringed by steep walls with a soda lake at its centre. Few places anywhere pack in so much wildlife.

Down on the floor you find elephant, buffalo, hippo wallowing near the hippo pool, hyena, and lion, along with the plains game they hunt. This is also one of the better spots in Tanzania to look for the black rhino, though as ever there are no promises. You spend around five hours driving the caldera and take a picnic lunch inside it, surrounded by the action.

When you have had your fill you climb back up the crater wall and begin the drive to Arusha, arriving by early evening. Your guide drops you at your hotel or at the airport for onward travel, bringing your migration safari to a close. Breakfast and lunch are the meals provided on your last day.