This ten-night route runs across Tanzania in four stays. It opens in Arusha at 1,400 metres beneath Mount Meru, then reaches the eastern Serengeti at Soit Le Motonyi, long-closed cheetah country of open short-grass plains. From there it crosses to the southern Serengeti and the Kusini calving grounds, before flying west to the Mahale Mountains, where forest comes down to the shore of Lake Tanganyika and a chimpanzee community lives in the trees above the beach.
You travel by road and game drive, days built around morning and afternoon drives with time to let a sighting develop. Arusha is a single settling night in a 1905 farmhouse; the Serengeti stays are tented camps, one of them mobile and pitched with the migration; the last leg is a scheduled flight from Arusha to Mahale, where the chimpanzees are tracked on foot in forest with no roads in it at all.
Land at Kilimanjaro International after dark and wake to Mount Meru before the drive to the parks begins. Arusha sits at 1,400 metres on the mountain's southern slopes, a logistical hinge rather than the main event, and a single night here lets you settle first. Set on Meru's forested lower slopes around 20 kilometres east of town, the 1905 farmhouse has been run by the Leach family since 1974. Colobus and Sykes' monkeys move through the canopy, a spring-fed lake sits at the centre of the grounds, and meals lean on the estate's organic garden and freshly caught trout.
These are the eastern Serengeti's open, short-grass plains at Soit Le Motonyi, country set aside for cheetah research and closed to tourism for more than twenty years. Days run on morning and afternoon game drives across sightlines that stretch for kilometres, with lion prides holding territory, leopards along the seasonal Ngare Nanyuki River, and cheetahs, serval and caracal out on the ground. Game drives here often pass without another vehicle in sight. Opened in 2014, the camp keeps close links to the Serengeti Cheetah Project, and breakfast is set up on Soit Le Motonyi Rock with the plains below.
From December to March the camp is pitched on a Kusini hillside above the southern short-grass plains, where hundreds of thousands of wildebeest gather to calve within a few short weeks and the open ground draws intense predator activity. Kusini lies apart from the busier Ndutu tracks, so game drives regularly find large herds and cats with barely another vehicle in sight. Ten canvas tents, one of them a family tent, stand well apart, each with a private veranda facing the plains. Inside are proper beds, campaign furniture, en-suite bathrooms and a fire-heated bucket shower; lions, hyenas and the grunt of wildebeest carry through the night.
The last leg is a flight west to the Mahale Mountains, forested country on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika with no roads in it at all. The scheduled service runs from Arusha, so the Serengeti connects without a long backtrack. Chimpanzee trekking starts on foot from the beach and climbs through steep forest until the trackers find the group, a community researchers have followed since the 1960s that now moves easily around people. An hour with them is the limit, and the walk back leaves the afternoon for the lake, clear enough to snorkel and holding hundreds of cichlid species found nowhere else. Greystoke Mahale sets six bandas of old dhow timber along the sand, with rainforest rising behind.
Ed Charles, BBC Producer
Fitzroy are true specialists in accessing the wilderness. They know where to go and importantly, when to go there. Highly recommended.
01 of 13
tanzania
Ten nights through Arusha, the Ngorongoro highlands and Tarangire's Silale Swamp, closing on Zanzibar's south-east coast.
01 of 11
tanzania
Twelve nights across remote Ruaha, the walking country of the Rufiji, and a private coral island on the reef.
01 of 13
tanzania & rwanda
Climb Kilimanjaro's Lemosho route, recover on Mount Meru, then trek mountain gorillas in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park.
rated five stars by our clients
our approach
Every journey starts with a conversation. We take the time to understand your vision before we start planning.
Whether by phone or in person, we work with you directly to shape something that is considered, personal, and expertly delivered.
Every journey starts with a conversation. We favour a direct, personal approach: understanding your vision before anything else.
Whether by phone or in person, we work with you directly to shape a journey that is both thoughtfully considered and expertly delivered.
Get in touch to start planning yours.
