Great Migration Safari 2024: Tanzania

Whenever you arrive Kilimanjaro Airport in northern Tanzania you’ll be personally met and privately transferred about an hour to a lovely lodge located above Lake Duluti in the town of Usa River outside Arusha city. This is the perfect place to relax after a long journey! The modern, ecofriendly lodge is surrounded in dense forests filled with colobus monkey and exotic birds! There are a number of easy walks in the area including around the lake, and canoeing or fishing can be arranged. Dinner and overnight at Lake Duluti Lodge.
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Enjoy a comfortable morning before returning to the airport for the flight into your first game park! Jim and those on the Kenyan presafari fly into the airport from Kenya and join you for the short flight into Tarangire National Park. Tarangire is the land of baobabs and anyone who has read the Little Prince will immediately be transported into the fantasy world that Tarangire emulates so well! This is Africa's best elephant park and includes a huge resident population of very wild elephant. Game view to your first camp in the remote center of the park. Dinner and overnight at Ndovu Tented Lodge.
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Beautiful landscapes of rolling hills, deep valleys and intriguing swamps with lots of buffalo, elephant, giraffe and so much more all near camp. With its formidable sand rivers, Tarangire is actually more like a southern African park than East African providing the opportunity to find some unusual wildlife like kudu and roan. But the feature of your day will be elephants. See Jim’s blog for many posts about his belief there are now too many elephants in northern Tanzania. He’ll also use the big Silale Swamp to recount the exciting tale of Stanley finding Livingstone. Meals and overnight at at Ndovu Tented Lodge.
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After an early breakfast game view along the fabulous Tarangire sand river to the northern gate of the park. Buffalo, zebra, giraffe and hartebeest are common, framed by some of the most enormous baobab trees on the continent. Time to explore the famous local craft market in Mto-wa-Mbu before climbing up the Great Rift Valley. The Rift is one of the few geological features easily spotted from outer space, a huge cleavage in the continent. Jim gives you a quick overview of the ancient geology of East Africa that led to the Great Rift and ultimately produced the rich biomass that facilitated the evolution of man. Continue into the beautiful agricultural highlands stopping for lunch at the town of Karatu before continuing to Gibb’s Farm for two wonderful nights.
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This single full day outside the game viewing circuit provides invaluable opportunities to experience contemporary rural Tanzania. Free activities include a guided tour of the nearby town visiting one of its schools and some of its shops; guided bird and flower tours; and several hands-on opportunities to learn about this working coffee and vegetable farm. You can also rent a mountain bike and travel with a guide through the beautiful hills of the area; take a forest ranger for a walk into the Ngorongoro Conservation Area to a cave frequented by elephant; or schedule a private session with a Maasai shaman for some local ideas for simple prevention and remedies of common diseases.

Many guests, however, simply adore the extraordinary comfort provided by the expansive, private cottages surrounded by some of the most beautiful exotic African vegetation imaginable. Birders will be especially thrilled. Meals and overnight at Gibb’s Farm.
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Dawn game drive in nearby Lake Manyara National Park. Manyara is one of the most beautiful parks on the circuit and by far its smallest. It’s composed of the great soda lake, the forested shoreline, and the steep escarpments that rise onto the top of the Great Rift Valley. Once famous for its millions of flamingoes and large herds of elephant, climate change and persistent flooding have eroded those habitats, but what remains is a magical jungle resplendent in fairyland giant trees and the largest and most exotically colored birds found on safari. You’ll likely also encounter hundreds of baboon and other forest creatures like impala and dik-dik. Jim’s staff will set a picnic breakfast over the lake and the safari will return to Gibb’s for lunch. In the afternoon it’s a quick drive to Ngorongoro Crater. You’ll get your first glimpse in the beautiful late afternoon of mighty Ngorongoro Crater. Once the world’s largest structure, a super massive volcano, it blew its stack three million years ago in what must have been an apocalyptic event. Drive around its rim, the spectacular views always to your side, to the new Melia Ngorongoro Lodge for dinner and overnight.
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Dawn game drive in the amazing Ngorongoro Crater National Park. When the dinosaur volcano blew up it contracted into seven smaller volcanoes, the furthest east one which remains active although very small, today. The other six are now dormant, and the caldera of the largest is the national park so famous as a big game sanctuary. The 100 sq. mile crater with its 1800' high rim has a resident big game population of around 20,000 and includes the last free-ranging black rhino easily seen in East Africa. Few animals remain all their lives in the crater and contrary to popular belief, it’s very easy for them to go in and out. But several dozen male elephant which took sanctuary in the crater during the years of terrible poaching have remained and seem to have no intention of leaving. And so the crater now includes the distinction of protecting some of the largest tusked elephant left on earth, even though the habitat on the crater floor is not the best for elephant. The lack of trees is the reason that there are no giraffe in the crater, for example. Few geographic formations on earth can create such a beautiful scene, and animated with Africa’s big game, the crater is truly one of the most special places on the continent.

Enjoy a special picnic breakfast on the crater floor before returning to the lodge for a late lunch and relaxing afternoon. Meals and overnight at, Melia Ngorongoro Lodge.
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Many consider today the most exciting drive on safari into the remote southeastern lands of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the Lemuta Plains. The journey starts simply enough on the main road into the central Serengeti surrounded by spectacular scenery. First stop is Olduvai Gorge, the most historic paleontological site in the world. Jim will try to get you into the actual site where Mary Leakey discovered “Nutcracker Man” jump-starting the intense interest in human evolution that continues today. Afterwards he’ll guide you through a brief history of mankind using the site’s new and impressive museum. After Olduvai it’s a quick drive to the “Shifting Sands.” These seven mysterious hills walk across the Serengeti! Their journeys are documented with concrete slabs, year by year!

Then virtually all safari vehicles head back onto the Serengeti road. But not Jim. Few guides or drivers venture further into this vast, remote grassland. There are no roads and often no tracks except the great single files pressed into the veld from the millions of migrating wildebeest and zebra. The entire area could be filled with migrating herds, cat kills, marauding hyaena and barking jackals. The scenery is spectacular, and this is the domain of the few remaining traditional Maasai people.

If the grasses are wet it's wall-to-wall wilde and zebra. If it's dry there are only the hundreds of thousands of Thomson's gazelle which don't migrate, lots of ostrich and huge herds of giant eland. Jim might spot a pond tucked into the plains, and order his vehicles to search for the hyaena hiding in wait.

Lunch is taken atop one of the billion-year-old kopjes, or rocky outcrops that is the trademark of this ancient, fecund land. The views leave people breathless.

In the afternoon Jim’s rovers continue racing over these amazing plains, through the little rolling canyons between the giant kopjes boulders and past finger lakes and transient ponds. Thousands of tommie gazelle pop all over the place, ostrich often challenges the rovers to a race, and the Big Sky horizon leave indelible memories. By the end of the day arrive Ndutu Lodge in the only lakes area of the great Serengeti. Simple and comfortable, this has been one of Jim’s favorite stops since his very first safaris in the 1970s!
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Ndutu Lodge is built in the forests just off the shore of Lake Ndutu. During times of heavy rain Lake Ndutu merges with its sister, Lake Masek, to form a huge, shallow and unbelievably beautiful lake in the southwest Serengeti. Flamingo and other colorful water birds will be seen, and the impressive acacia woodlands which surround the lake have a very high density of leopard, many lion and cheetah and virtually every other animal found in the Serengeti. Game drives are endlessly thrilling, and the lodge is perfectly suited for heading out with picnics to more distant areas of the Serengeti, like the Keskesio or Kusini Plains, traditional calving fields for millions of wildebeest and zebra. If the herds are there, Jim takes a picnic lunch and sets up a sit-down meal in the middle of millions of animals!

What Jim decides to do depends upon where the great herds are and what the other guides and drivers at the lodge can tell him. Ndutu is the “go-to” place during the migration, and the best of the safari guides will be found here picking each other’s brains! Meals and overnight at Ndutu Lodge.
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Normally the great herds will have been found by now, but so much depends upon weather. Climate change has thrown a real wrench into the standard workings of the Serengeti’s grassland ecosystems that had remained pretty much unchanged for the last innumerable centuries. The savannah around Ndutu is the lowest of the Serengeti’s great flat grasslands, which grow the most nutrient grasses. This is why the great herds come here for their annual calving. The mother’s milk must be rich enough to grow a 70-pound wildebeest baby into a formidable 150-pound running machine in hardly four months! (A fully mature male wildebeest can weigh 350 pounds.) But if it hasn’t rained here, the herds will be elsewhere, so Jim has built in the final two days in the central Serengeti.

The resident animal populations of the central Serengeti, which don’t migrate, are enormously impressive, including tens of thousands of other larger antelope like topi and hartebeest. The center of the park, Seronera, is famous for the highest density of lion in all of Africa! So whether the big herds are here are not, rest assured this is where some of the best game viewing will be enjoyed!

The drive north from Ndutu goes via the majestic Moru Kopjes, probably the prettiest area of the Serengeti. Beautiful rivers and forests wrap around grand ancient boulders, some a billion years old! In fact, weather-permitting, Jim sets lunch atop one of these boulders, although from time these plans in the past have been altered by python or lions. Here is where Jim tells you the amazing story of the Maasai, because these were once the precious lands of the Maasai.

Continue to the center of the park known as Seronera, then a bit further to an astoundingly beautiful ridge that overlooks miles and miles of the Serengeti. The safari’s final two nights are in an exciting, splendid tented camp, Nyikani Serengeti.
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The final day of game viewing is guaranteed to seal your memories with all the excitement and great events of the last several weeks! In this area are found thousands of resident animals, colonies of hippos in the famous Grumeti river often exceeding several hundred along with giant croc, plains with cheetah, hyaena and wild dog. It’s no wonder this is the Serengeti’s most popular area.

Tonight around the camp fire Jim will help you debrief the overwhelming sights and sounds of your time in Africa. The staff will bring out blankets for the final sunset of your safari, and often, sing a tune or so for your farewell dinner! Overnight at Nyikani Serengeti.
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After breakfast travel to the central Serengeti airstrip, bid farewell to your driver/guides and brothers-in-arms and take a quick flight back to Arusha, Tanzania’s largest northern city. Separate vehicles will take everyone into the city to the famous Cultural Heritage complex. This is a mixture of a giant curio store – perfect for your last-minute gifts, the most reputable Tanzanite shop in the country and a wonderful multi-story art museum that includes all sorts of African art. After time to eat your picnic lunch or buy something from the center’s restaurant, you continue another hour to Kilimanjaro airport. Everyone will have private rooms at the Airport Planet Lodge which you can occupy until your departures home. Most flights to Europe returning to America leave later this evening returning you home tomorrow.
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