8 Days Best of Kenya and Tanzania Combined Budget Group Safari

You are collected from the airport or your hotel for breakfast and a briefing before setting out. The drive southwest takes in the Rift Valley viewpoint and a lunch stop at Narok, and an afternoon game drive follows on arrival at the reserve. Dinner and overnight at the lodge or camp.

A full day of game viewing with a picnic lunch. Rolling savannah and a dense track network make this the most dependable big cat country in Kenya, and lion, cheetah and leopard are all comfortable around vehicles here. Lunch at Hippo Pool, where hippo and crocodile share the water. Dinner and overnight at your camp.

An early morning balloon flight can be arranged at additional cost.

There is an optional visit to a Maasai homestead after breakfast, paid directly at the village, before the drive back to Nairobi with lunch on the way. You arrive in the evening and are dropped at your hotel or the airport.

The morning shuttle leaves Nairobi for Tanzania, with immigration formalities at the Namanga crossing. You reach Arusha in the afternoon and check into your hotel on a bed and breakfast basis.

The road west runs across open Maasai grazing land past bomas and herders, and about two hours out you reach the gate of Lake Manyara National Park. The game drive here goes through groundwater forest fed by springs at the base of the escarpment, good for hippo, elephant, buffalo, giraffe, zebra and blue monkey. Dinner and overnight at your lodge or camp.

The morning drive climbs over the Ngorongoro highlands, where zebra and wildebeest often graze alongside Maasai cattle, then drops into the Serengeti. Picnic lunch, then an afternoon game drive that regularly turns up lion, hippo, giraffe, leopard and reedbuck. Dinner and overnight at camp or lodge.

A final morning on the Serengeti plains, then the road east to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area with lunch en route. You reach the rim by evening for dinner and overnight.

Down onto the crater floor for the morning, working through grassland, swamp and the shore of the soda lake. The caldera walls concentrate an enormous amount of wildlife into a very small area, which is why this is usually the drive people remember. Picnic lunch inside the crater, then the climb out and on to Arusha for the night.