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Depart at 1900 from London's Heathrow Airport on Kenya Airways flight KQ101 to Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Kenya.
Arrive at 0630 and connect with a scheduled flight departing at 0800 to Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, for the start of your safari holiday adventure. Over the next eight days you will be taken on a private safari in a fully equipped four wheel drive vehicle with radio and a highly experienced driver/guide. You will have the flexibility to go where you wish, when you wish, and can vary your activities to include walking where possible as well as unlimited game drives, while visiting some of Tanzania's most famous national parks and conservation areas (fully inclusive of meals and activities).
On arrival at 0850 in Tanzania, you will be met by your private guide and taken with a picnic on a Safari drive via Lake Manyara to Karatu. Lake Manyara is the most beautiful of all alkaline lakes with its innumerable birds as well as supporting hippopotamus. A birdwatcher's paradise, glossy starlings, weaver birds, eagles and many other species abound especially between October and April, when migrants visit.
The crescent shaped Lake Manyara National Park adjoins the lake and supports an extraordinarily dense and varied population of wildlife. With its 315kms_, the park is relatively small but the scenery is wonderful. In front of the steep wall of the Rift Valley open grassland turns into a landscape scattered with mahogany and fig trees to be taken over by acacia forests and the ground water forest with its abundant wildlife, such as elephants, rhinos, wildebeest, impala, Cape buffalo and giraffe, all present in large numbers. Manyara is also the home of the tree-climbing lion, which can sometimes be seen in the candelabra and sausage trees that line the Simba River.
Continue your safari holiday onto Gibbs Farm, arriving in time for dinner, where you stay for three nights.
Surrounded by lush tropical flowers and trees, Gibb's Farm is a brick and stone house set among its own ten acre vegetable garden and overlooking a coffee plantation. The forest of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area starts immediately behind the safari lodge and terraced gardens provide panoramic views towards the Great Rift Escarpment.
Comfortable accommodation is provided in fifteen attractive luxury cottages. The atmosphere is friendly and informal and breakfast and lunch are buffet style, while candlelit dinners create a relaxed romantic mood in the dining room. Each meal is prepared with fresh ingredients from the working farm. There are two lounges in which guests can relax over a drink.
You can spend the day enjoying the prolific bird life, stroll among the extensive gardens or take a walk up through the forest to the waterfall and elephant caves. On your return you may spot bushbuck, baboon, elephant or even leopard.
In the early morning of Day 3 you will be taken by your guide down into the Crater for a morning's game viewing. When the Crater becomes busy, you will leave and head off to explore the surrounding area and one of the small craters, before returning to the lodge.
Ngorongoro Crater was originally a volcano larger than Mount Kilimanjaro but approximately three million years ago a huge series of eruptions caused the centre to subside forming a vast volcanic caldera ten miles wide. The floor of the caldera is 1500ft below the rim and on this 80 mile_ area live 20,000 animals of all kinds. There are thousands of wildebeest, zebra, antelope, giraffe and other plains game, lion, leopard, hyena and bat-eared fox and 17 rhinoceros which have been preserved from the poachers and are now beginning to flourish again. The animals in the crater are used to the presence of mankind, which makes this a good area for wildlife photography, particularly as the crater floor is so diverse with areas of swamp, woodland and dry savannah grassland, all set against the backdrop of the forested crater walls.
In the southern quarter of the crater lies Lake Magadi which is a haven for waterbirds and you can frequently see flocks of thousands of flamingos gathered in one corner making their raucous calls and presenting a mass of pink wings, necks and legs.
To the north east of Ngorongoro lie other craters, such as Empakai and Ol Moti, which provide excellent walking opportunities and if you visit Empakai you can descend into the steep-sided forest crater and admire the beautiful lake which sits in its base. From time to time you meet groups of scarlet-cloaked Maasai herding their cattle and goats, and for those clients staying a little longer in Ngorongoro it would be possible to visit a Maasai Boma to see something of their way of life.
Today you leave the Ngorongoro Highlands with your guide on a drive with picnics via Olduvai Gorge - a deep and rocky gorge, made famous by the numerous ancient remains, fossils and artefacts discovered there. The gorge takes its name from the wild sisal 'Olduvai' which grows in abundance.
There is a small museum at the Gorge, which has several displays describing the major archaeological finds of the area, and you may also be able to visit some of the sites before continuing on across the grassy plains of the Serengeti to a shared 'traditional' tented camp where you stay for three nights.
This is a seasonal luxury tented safari camp (with four tents) on a private site, and is moved as the migration progresses.
A support team will manage the safari camp and cook excellent meals which will be taken in a dining tent. You will be accommodated in large walk in tents with beds and safari furniture. At the front of each tent is a large verandah with table and chairs, and at the back is an en suite bathroom incorporating a private w.c. and bucket shower cubicle. Hot water will be available day and night on demand.
Each party at the safari camp has its own private vehicle so each is independent, returning to dine and stay together overnight.
The Serengeti, Tanzania, is one of the largest and richest wildlife reserves in the world. The soil is very fertile, light coloured volcanic deposits blown from the huge volcanoes which lie to the east creating continuous undulating plains giving the appearance of great 'oceans of grassland'.
The Serengeti is full of variety with unbroken grassland in some areas, towering hills, great partially eroded rocky kopjes in the east and south, while to the west woodland and forest lead down to Lake Victoria a perfect location for a fantastic Safari. A variety of attractive acacia trees are found throughout the Serengeti, and by rivers there are huge fig and rain trees. As you drive across the plains the scenery changes in appearance every three or four miles. It also changes from season to season; covered in brilliant green grasses with beautiful flowers during and after the rainy season with bright beige and yellow grass colours predominating in the dry season.
The Serengeti has a high density of game including elephant, graceful giraffe and many species of antelope ranging from the tiny dik dik to the larger hartebeest and waterbuck. This is also an excellent area for spotting predators including lion, sleek looking leopard and cheetah. The Serengeti is most famous for the annual migration of 1.5 million wildebeest and 300,000 zebra which traverse the plains in large herds and long lines, spending approximately nine months of the year in the Serengeti and three in the neighbouring Masai Mara.
Today you depart with picnics to the airstrip at Kleins where you board a private charter flight to Arusha, connecting on arrival with a further scheduled flight to Nairobi, kenya. Arrive and connect with your main International flight KQ102 departing at 2350 to London's Heathrow Airport.
Arrive at 0645 (local time).