6 Days Wildebeest Migration Safari in Tanzania

Your safari starts in Arusha with a morning pickup from your lodge or hotel. The drive to Lake Manyara National Park covers about 120 kilometers and takes roughly two and a half to three hours, running through Maasai country and past the small town of Mto wa Mbu. Manyara is a compact, green park pressed between the wall of the Rift Valley and the lake itself.

You spend the day on a full game drive with a picnic lunch. The park is known for its birdlife, and the shallows often hold flamingos and pelicans in good numbers, while elephant, zebra, dik-dik, and hippo along the lake shore are common on the ground. More than 400 species of birds have been recorded here, so the forest and lakeside stay busy from morning to afternoon.

In the late afternoon you drive up to the Karatu area, where lunch and dinner are served at Country Lodge or Olea Africana Lodge for the night.

After breakfast you set off on the long, rewarding drive across the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and into the Serengeti through Naabi Hill Gate. The road climbs over the highlands before dropping onto the plains, and from Naabi you turn north toward the remote reaches of the park. This is a big driving day, but the scenery does most of the work.

You keep game viewing going along the way, with the grassland opening wider and emptier the farther north you push. The Northern Serengeti is quieter and more rugged than the central plains, and reaching it feels like getting off the main road. If you would like to add a dawn Balloon Safari over the plains, your guide can arrange it here.

You reach your lodge in the late afternoon, with dinner and the night spent at Serengeti Mara Heritage Camp.

These two days are given to the key corners of the Northern Serengeti, including Lobo, Bologonja, and Kogatende. This is where the herds mass in the crossing season, so you have the time to move with them and wait out the long, patient hours that a river crossing demands. Carrying picnic lunches lets you stay out in the field through the middle of the day.

The Mara River banks on the Tanzanian side are the heart of it. Around September into October, wildebeest gather in their thousands with zebra and gazelle mixed in, hesitating on the edge before plunging across. Crocodiles wait in the water and lions shadow the herds on the banks. You may see a hunt, a standoff, or a full crossing, and you may see none of it on a given day, because the animals decide.

Both nights are spent at Serengeti Mara Heritage Camp, with all meals at camp.

You leave the Northern Serengeti after breakfast and drive south through the central plains, keeping the game viewing going as you go. The central Serengeti holds resident predators year-round, so this transit day still turns up lion, cheetah, and the odd leopard resting in a riverine tree. You exit the park at Naabi Hill Gate and climb toward the Ngorongoro highlands.

Along the way there is the option to visit Olduvai Gorge, one of the most important early-human sites in the world, or a traditional Maasai village, either of which can be arranged. The road up to the crater rim brings a real change in the air, cooler and often wrapped in cloud, with the great bowl of the caldera opening below.

You overnight at the crater rim, with dinner and the night at Rhino Lodge.

You start early with a descent into the Ngorongoro Crater, dropping down the steep track as the floor comes to life in the morning light. The crater is a closed world of grassland, swamp, and soda lake, and you spend the morning searching for lion, elephant, buffalo, rhino, and, with luck, a leopard. Few places give a better chance of seeing the full Big Five in a single morning.

After a last game drive and a picnic lunch on the crater floor, you climb back out and begin the drive to Arusha, arriving in the afternoon. From here many guests carry on to the coast, and a Zanzibar beach add-on is an easy way to round off the trip.

Breakfast and a picnic lunch are your meals today, and the safari ends on arrival in Arusha.