Tanzania has more worth seeing than any one trip can hold, and the commonest mistake is trying anyway. Here is the honest map, grouped the way we would actually plan around it.
The northern circuit: where most first trips go
Four places sit close enough together that a week does them properly, which is why almost every first visit happens here.
- The Serengeti. The plains everyone pictures, and the reason the word safari means what it does. Big cats, enormous skies, and the wildebeest migration moving through it for most of the year.
- Ngorongoro Crater. A collapsed volcano with a floor full of animals that mostly do not leave. Dense, dramatic and busy, and worth a day rather than three.
- Tarangire. Elephants and baobabs, quieter than its neighbours, and at its best in the dry months when animals gather along the river. Underrated by visitors, not by guides.
- Lake Manyara. Small, green and easy, with a groundwater forest, flamingos on the lake edge and a reputation for lions in trees. A good half day on the way through.
Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru
The mountain is a destination in its own right and the reason many people come at all. Mount Meru, an hour from Arusha, is the one almost nobody looks at, and it is both the best warm-up for Kilimanjaro and a fine climb on its own with wildlife on the lower slopes.
Zanzibar and the coast
Stone Town for the history, the east and north coasts for the beaches, and the reefs for the water. Most of our guests finish here, because a week of doing nothing after a climb or a safari is the correct order of operations.
The southern parks
Ruaha, Nyerere and Mikumi are bigger, emptier and much less visited than the north. Ruaha in particular has a scale that surprises people who thought they had already seen African wilderness. The trade-off is distance and time. This is a second Tanzania trip more often than a first, and it is what our Southern Tanzania Adventure is for.
The western circuit, and what we do not sell
Gombe and Mahale, on Lake Tanganyika, are where the chimpanzees are, and Gombe is where Jane Goodall worked. It is a remarkable and expensive corner of the country reached by light aircraft. We do not operate there, so if chimpanzees are the point of your trip we will point you to someone who does rather than sell you a substitute.
The places between the places
These are the ones people are glad they added and never planned for. Lake Natron under Ol Doinyo Lengai, the active volcano the Maasai call the mountain of God. Lake Eyasi, where some of the last hunter-gatherer communities live. Olduvai Gorge, where some of the oldest human remains were found, and which you drive past on the way to the Serengeti without realising. Karatu and the coffee farms on the crater highlands.
How many should you try to see?
Fewer than you want to. As a rough rule: three or four places in ten days, with at least two nights each. Every extra place is another packing morning and another half day in the vehicle, and the trips people describe best afterwards are almost always the ones with fewer stops.
Tell us how many days you have and what you most want to see, and we will tell you honestly what fits and what to save for next time.
