tanzania: migration and great rift hike

It is a long trip that moves often, so it repays being cut to fit rather than taken whole.

Eight stays across nineteen nights averages a little over two nights each, and three of those stops are single nights: the arrival below Meru, the crater rim and the walking night in the central Serengeti.

The block that cannot be trimmed is the Rift. The two days on foot between Lake Manyara and Lake Natron only work as a pair, and Natron needs the two nights after them if the volcano is on your list.

Everything else can move:

• The five beach nights at the end are the easiest to shorten or lengthen
• The four Serengeti plains nights can lose one
• The crater can come out altogether if walking is what you came for

Tell us which half matters more and we will rebuild around it.

Most days offer some and two demand it.

Walking is built into Lake Manyara, the two Rift days, Lake Natron, the central Serengeti and the plains camp, with game drives running alongside almost all of it, so on any given morning you can take as much or as little as suits.

The exceptions are the crossing to Natron, which we grade as strenuous and put at about a day and a half of steady descent, and the night ascent of Ol Doinyo Lengai.

For everything else the standard is ordinary hill fitness: several hours over uneven ground at a guide's pace, stopping often, which is the opposite of an endurance expedition. Tanzania's park authority sets twelve as the youngest age for a walking safari and treats anything beyond four hours as a long walk.

No, and plenty of people do not.

The climb leaves camp in the middle of the night, timed so that you are on top for first light and off the mountain before the sun is high. The whole thing takes twelve to fourteen hours and is one of the hardest single day ascents in East Africa.

It is more than 1,600 metres of ascent in about five kilometres on loose volcanic ash, far steeper than anything else here. It suits someone who walks uphill regularly and does not mind losing a night's sleep, and the descent is long and hard on the knees.

Nobody goes up without a local guide, and if you are unsure whether it is for you, ask your own doctor before you book. Skip it and the Natron days still hold the dawn flamingo walk and the Ngare Sero gorge.

One morning on the floor, and for most people that is enough.

The stay is built around a single descent by registered 4x4, and a camp on the rim near the descent road means you can be down in first light rather than behind the vehicles climbing up from Karatu.

Driving inside the conservation area is allowed between six in the morning and six at night, with the descent gate itself closing at four, so starting early is worth more than staying late.

The floor is enclosed and open at the same time, which is why the game is so visible, and it is one of the better places in Tanzania to look for black rhino, though how easily they are found varies.

At around 2,300 metres the rim is cold at dawn all year, so keep a warm layer to hand.

July to October, and on a trip this long the calendar is doing several jobs at once.

Those months are dry in Lake Manyara, the Serengeti and the crater and settled on the Zanzibar coast, and June to September is the cool window at Lake Natron for two days on foot. They are also when the northern herds reach the Mara River, from about July.

January and February would suit the calving on the southern plains and the coast, but Natron runs above 40 degrees then and we rate it the weakest part of the year for walking there, which is the section of this trip that cannot move.

March to May is the long rains: heavy tracks, some camps shut and the wettest weeks on the coast.

If the walking is the point of the trip, come between June and September.

The Serengeti at ground level, in a corner where ordinary game-viewing vehicles do not go.

The camp sits on the edge of one of the park's wilderness zones, which stay closed to general traffic, and camps on the boundary can walk into them. In practice that means a different sort of morning: tracks, dung, bones, grasses and insects, the things a vehicle drives past, with the big animals watched from a distance rather than approached.

The park authority licenses the walking, a ranger goes out alongside the camp's own rifle-trained guides, twelve is the youngest anyone may walk, and four hours is where a short walk becomes a long one.

One night is a taste rather than a walking safari. If it is the part you want most, say so and we will add nights here and take them from the beach.