Nanyukie Lodge

By light aircraft to Seronera, the main airstrip in the centre of the Serengeti, then a drive east to the lodge that takes between forty minutes and an hour depending on what you stop for on the way. The scheduled flights from Arusha take about an hour and a quarter, a little longer when the aircraft calls at Manyara first, and there are several departures a day.

We can also arrange a private charter, typically a Cessna Caravan or a Pilatus PC-12, which is worth it for a family, or for a party coming straight off an international flight, and which lands at Seronera when you want rather than when the timetable says. On any light aircraft the limit is fifteen kilograms a person in soft bags, hand luggage included.

In passing, and in a narrow window. The herds come back south through this side of the park with the short rains, usually from late October into December, on their way from the north down to the calving grounds around Ndutu, and November and December are the months when the plains around the lodge are most likely to fill with wildebeest and zebra. Outside that the herds are elsewhere: on the Mara River in the north from about July to October, and on the short-grass plains in the south from December to March.

So if a river crossing or the calving is the point of the trip, we pair this lodge with the north or the south for those weeks rather than asking it to deliver them. What it delivers in every month is the cats, and a stay in August or February is a different trip here, not a lesser one.

Yes. TravelHealthPro, the UK's official travel health service, rates all of Tanzania below 1,800 metres as high risk and recommends antimalarial tablets for it, treating only ground above 1,800 metres as free of risk, and the American CDC uses the same 1,800 metre line and recommends prescription medicine for the areas beneath it. The Serengeti lies between about 920 and 1,850 metres, and the Seronera airstrip you fly into sits at roughly 1,550, so this is malaria country under both sets of advice.

We do not give medical advice, and we are careful not to imply otherwise: we are travel planners, not medical professionals. Which tablets are right for you, and whether they suit a child or anyone else in the party, is a conversation for your own doctor or a travel clinic, ideally with your dates in hand. The non-medical part is simple, and the lodge makes it easy: the beds are netted, and the sunken seat on the deck with a drink at dusk is exactly the hour for long sleeves and repellent.

From school age, yes. The lodge takes children from about five or six; the published figure varies, so we confirm the current rule for your dates. The reason for a minimum at all is the suites themselves: every deck is open to the plains and carries its own plunge pool, which is a delight for a ten-year-old and a worry with a toddler. There is one two-bedroom family suite, two tents joined under a covered walkway with room for four, and the children's programme is aimed at under-twelves. The ranger-escorted walks carry their own, higher, age limit, so with a mixed-age party we plan the walks for the older ones and a shorter drive for the rest.

Yes, and it is included rather than charged for. The connection is in the suites rather than across the whole camp, which is where you will want it, and laundry is included on the same basis, so a three-night stay with fifteen kilograms of luggage is entirely workable. Treat it as enough for messages and photographs rather than a working day, and let the kopje at sundowner time win.

Three is the number we start from. Two full days let the guide work the kopjes and the drainage lines properly rather than driving the same loop, and leave one morning free for a balloon flight without losing a game drive to it. Two nights works when the lodge is one of three Serengeti stops on a longer route; one night is a transit, and we would rather not sell it as anything else. If the herds matter, add two or three nights in the north between July and October, or in the south from December to March, so the trip has a resident-game stretch and a migration stretch rather than asking one place to be both.