tanzania: the serengeti on foot, then zanzibar

It is a licensed activity with rules attached, not a stroll from the door.

In the Serengeti a walk normally goes out with an armed park ranger, and at the camp every walk is led by an experienced walking guide, with armed rangers alongside where they are required.

Park rules split walks into short, meaning one to four hours, and long, meaning anything above that, which is the half day and the full day this trip offers; they set no distance.

The walks are built around watching rather than covering ground, at a relaxed pace adapted to whoever is in the party. So the effort here lies in the heat and the hours rather than the mileage, and the ground near camp is mostly flat.

Different things, and usually further off.

A walk is about tracks, dung, bones, birds, plants and the small animals a vehicle drives past, and about standing in the landscape instead of looking at it from a seat.

Big animals are approached carefully and from downwind, and the guide's first job is to keep the distance safe, so the elephant or buffalo you meet on foot will be further away than the one you photograph from a vehicle, and the encounter will feel nothing like it.

The value of this particular camp is the ground: it sits on the edge of a zone the park closes to general game viewing vehicles, so you walk where nobody is driving. Lions hold the kopjes nearby, and the route is chosen each morning on what the ground shows.

Old fashioned camping kept comfortable, and small.

Pembezoni's tents are spacious and en suite, each set apart from the next for privacy and for the view over the surrounding country, canvas on wooden beds with a private veranda facing the plains. The loos flush throughout the camp, a recent upgrade, so this is not the long drop end of walking safaris.

It stands on the Nyabogati River in the central Serengeti, roughly forty minutes north of Seronera, near enough to the game drive country to use it and far enough out to walk straight from the door.

The camp has always been taken by one party at a time, though it has now introduced a limited number of beds on a shared basis, so ask us which applies to your dates.

For walking, choose the dry stretch between June and October, and July to October is rated top on every part of this route: short grass, firm ground, cool air early on, and Zanzibar in its calm, clear spell.

February is the other strong month, with the calving in the south drawing predators and settled weather on the coast, though the central Serengeti is warmer and greener by then.

The quiet months are November to January, when the birdlife is at its best and young animals are about, at the cost of taller grass, which shortens the sightlines that matter most on foot.

April and May are the two to leave alone: the long rains make walking heavy going and rough seas cut the diving, and March is wet across much of Tanzania.

Plan on losing most of a day to it.

From camp you drive to the airstrip near Seronera, then fly to Zanzibar; the scheduled service is around two hours airborne, rarely non-stop, and lands you on the island early in the afternoon. Bwejuu sits on the eastern shore, well across from the airport, so there is a drive at the end of it as well.

The luggage rule catches more people out than anything else here: 15 kilograms each on the light aircraft, hand baggage counted in, packed in something soft.

A private charter takes out the intermediate stops, and the aircraft is generally a Pilatus PC-12 or a Grand Caravan.

There is, and the park sets it rather than the camp.

The park's walking charges run to two bands only, adults and children of twelve and over, with nothing below that, and night walks are listed for sixteen and over. So a younger child can come on the trip but cannot go out on foot.

That matters here, because walking is the whole point of the first half. Where the children are younger we would rebuild the Serengeti half rather than bend the rules, using a camp built around game drives and saving the walking for a later trip.

The beach half suits any age. Give us the ages when you get in touch and we will check the camp's own rules before anything is booked.