tanzania: mobile camping with the migration

You can, and it is the reason most people pick this camp.

Each tent has a mesh walled section on its deck into which the bed rolls out, so there is netting and nothing else between you and the sky, and it rolls back under canvas if the weather turns.

The camp runs to nine or ten tents plus one or two family units, depending on which of its two sites it is standing on.

Bathrooms are en suite, with flushing loos and solar heated hot showers, there is battery charging and wifi, and the power comes off solar panels with a generator standing by. There is no pool and no air conditioning.

Nights are loud, because the camp stands among the animals rather than at a polite distance from them.

They are two different trips, and the camp moves between them.

From December to March it stands at Ndutu on the southern plains, where the wildebeest drop their calves inside a few weeks.

There are over 250,000 calves a year and eight to twelve thousand births a day in mid February, which is what draws lion, cheetah and hyena onto ground with no cover on it at all.

From June to October the camp is north near the Mara River, where the crossings begin in late July and continue into October, with the heaviest weeks in August and September. Nobody can promise one: a herd may wait on the bank for days, turn away, or go in where nobody can follow.

Calving is the steadier spectacle and crossings the more dramatic gamble. The camp is shut in April, May and November.

No qualification is needed.

The dive centre on the beach starts people from scratch, running entry level qualifications through to advanced and specialist ones, and it keeps groups to six divers a guide.

The reef here is a fringing one running some 65 kilometres down this coast and breaking about a kilometre offshore. The centre works a spread of named sites:

• Shallow ground at ten to eighteen metres, perfect for beginners and children
• Deeper reef from eighteen metres down to forty for qualified divers
• A wall that drops away beyond thirty four metres for the experienced

Snorkelling and the guided walks over the exposed reef at low water ask nothing of you at all. The water is at its clearest in the cool months from June to October, and roughest in April and May.

Two windows stand out and they give different holidays.

The first runs July to October, our highest rated stretch on every leg: by then Olakira has moved up to the Mara River, the plains have dried out, and the sea off Bwejuu has settled into its clearest months.

The second is February, when the calving is on at Ndutu and the coast is bright and settled.

December and January fall between the two, with fewer vehicles, birds down from Europe and the heavy skies photographers prize, set against game that is harder to place and calving that has barely started.

March is wetter across Tanzania. The camp itself closes for April, May and November, so those three are out whatever the weather, and April and May are also the roughest weeks at sea, when many dive centres on this coast shut too.

Road for the short hop and light aircraft for the long ones.

The first night is thirty five minutes by road from Kilimanjaro International, on the North Dolly estate. The Serengeti is then reached by air, landing at Ndutu in the calving months or in the north near the Mara River later in the year.

Zanzibar is about two hours' flying from the Serengeti, with a stop at another airstrip on most days, and Bwejuu lies across on the ocean side of the island.

The bag limit is what trips people up: 15 kilograms each, hand baggage counted within it, and a soft sided bag rather than a suitcase. A private charter can replace any leg, normally a Cessna Grand Caravan.

Most of it can move.

The five beach nights are the easiest to shorten or to swap for another stretch of coast, and any spare nights are best added in the Serengeti, where four at the river is already a fair run at a crossing and a fifth improves it.

What is fixed is the calendar. The camp stands at Ndutu only from December to March and in the north only from June to October, and it shuts in April, May and November, so your dates decide where you sleep rather than the other way round.

One thing worth knowing when you compare camps: in the calving months the site stands on Ngorongoro Conservation Area land, not inside the national park itself. The single Arusha night exists because most flights from Europe land late.