Northern circuit, Kilimanjaro, Zanzibar. Three trips, one country.
Which crater day actually puts you on the floor. What the seventh night on Lemosho buys that the sixth does not. Reviews of every tour you can book in Tanzania.
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A park day, a week on the mountain, Stone Town, and a waterfall on the coffee slopes.
The four bookings a first Tanzanian trip usually hangs off. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The park dayMikumi Safari Day Trip with Flights and MealFlights both ways out of Zanzibar and a full day in Mikumi. The one way to see big game without giving up the island week.
02The seven-day climbKilimanjaro climb by Lemosho Route (7-day)Lemosho over seven days. The extra night is what gets most people to the summit, and it is the difference worth paying for.
03The Stone Town dayStone Town, Spice Tour, Prison Island with LunchStone Town, a spice farm and the boat out to Prison Island in a single run. The day that does the whole introduction.
04The Moshi day outMateruni Waterfalls, coffee tour & Kikuletwa Hot SpringsMateruni falls, a coffee farm on the slopes, then the Kikuletwa springs to swim it off. Nothing else here gives back this much for a hundred dollars.
Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Tarangire, Mikumi: choose the park, then the number of days.
Each of these is a day, or a week, sold out of a town — Arusha for the northern three, Dar or Zanzibar for Mikumi. What changes is the driving, the animals and the bill.
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · Balloon Safari & Bush Breakfast in Serengeti – Miracle Experience
SerengetiThree days at the very least, out of Arusha. Open plains, and the herds if the month is right.
Ngorongoro CraterA descent onto the floor, six hours down there, back over the rim by mid-afternoon.
TarangireBaobabs and elephant. The short opening day most northern circuits start with.
MikumiDriveable from Dar, flyable from Zanzibar. The one easy big-game day off the coast.
All 642 safaris in Tanzania →
Four towns do the departing: Zanzibar, Arusha, Moshi, Dar es Salaam.
The parks are not places you stay. They are days you buy from a town, and these four are where the vehicles, the boats and the mountain crews leave from.
Tanzania’s most popular days out.
Every Tanzanian tour we have reviewed →The ones that fill first, from a twenty-dollar walk through Stone Town to a basket over the Serengeti at dawn.
1
Serengeti Balloon Safari and authentic bush breakfast
Review of Serengeti Balloon Safaris, with sunrise flight details, seasonal launch areas, bush breakfast, price, tips, and booking advice.
From · $550
Read our review →
2
Mikumi Safari Day Trip with Flights and Meal
from $451
3
Quad Bike Adventure departing from Kendwa or Nungwi
from $72
4
Stone Town, Spice Tour, Prison Island with Lunch
from $68
5
Tanzania Classic – 7 Days
from $3,913
6
4 Days Group Camping Safari
from $900
7
Mnemba Boat Trip and Dolphin Snorkel Adventure
from $50
8
Day Selous Game Reserve Safari with Flights
from $470
Five nights or eight: the whole Kilimanjaro decision is acclimatisation.
Marangu is the cheapest and the one most people turn back on. Machame and Lemosho add days and a kinder altitude profile, and those extra nights are what buy the summit. Everything here leaves from Moshi.
On Zanzibar the day is the old town, a farm, or a boat.
The stone streets on foot, a spice farm inland, or a hull out to Prison Island, Mnemba and a sandbank that vanishes at high tide. Most of what the archipelago sells is one of those with a different lunch attached.
- 1Prison Island and Nakupenda Boat Trip with Lunchfrom $39
- 2Prison Island, Stone Town, & Spice Farm Tourfrom $70
- 3Prison Island & Nakupenda Boat Tour with BBQ Lunchfrom $35
Tanzania is two price countries at once.
A twenty-dollar walk through Stone Town and a week under canvas in the Serengeti are both on this site. Everything on it, by what it costs.
The old town on foot, the spice farms, a dhow at sunset, an hour in the Kuza cave.
Full days: the crater floor, Mikumi by air from the coast, the waterfall-and-coffee run out of Moshi.
Three to five nights: camping circuits out of Arusha, the shorter routes up Kilimanjaro, a balloon at dawn.
Week-long northern circuits, the long Lemosho and Machame climbs, and the camps that follow the herds.
- 1Tanzania Classic – 7 Daysfrom $3,913
- 2Kilimanjaro climb by Lemosho Route (7-day)from $3,476
- 37-Day Premium Luxury Tanzania Safari All-Inclusivefrom $4,840
Three things that happen in Tanzania and nowhere else.
Plenty of countries have a game park and a beach. A two-million-animal river crossing, a collapsed volcano you drive down into, and an island built on cloves are not among them.
The Great Migration
The herds turn a slow loop through the Serengeti and back again, and the dangerous part is water. Between roughly July and October the columns pile up at the Mara and the Grumeti and go across in a rush, which is the scene almost everyone comes for. Nobody can give you the date. The camps in the north sell the window, not the day.
- 18 Days Great Wildebeest Calving Migration Safari from Arusha★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 254 reviews
- 210-Day Serengeti Wildebeest Migration Safari from Arusha★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 218 reviews
- 38 Day Spectacular Migration Serengeti mid -Range Tanzania Safari★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 161 reviews
Ngorongoro Crater
The caldera runs about twenty kilometres across with walls six hundred metres high, so most of what lives inside stays inside. Vehicles come down on a permit and get six hours on the floor before they have to climb back out. It is the densest wildlife in the country and the shortest day you will ever spend looking at it.
- 13 Days Serengeti & Ngorongoro Group Camping Safari★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 574 reviews
- 2Safari Serengeti And Ngorongoro★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 288 reviews
- 35 Days Camping Tarangire, Serengeti & Ngorongoro crater & Visiting Maasai★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 229 reviews
The Spice Farms
Zanzibar was run as a clove plantation for most of the nineteenth century and the trees are still standing, inland from the old town among nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla. The visit is a walk through a working farm with things pulled off branches and put in your hand, and it usually finishes with lunch cooked in what you just smelled.
- 1Prison Island, Stone Town, & Spice Farm Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 579 reviews
- 2Stone Town, Spice tour & Prison Island with Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 453 reviews
- 3Full-Day Private Stone Town +Spice Farm and Prison Island Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 216 reviews
Four things here run on somebody else’s calendar.
Most of a Tanzanian trip can be arranged at a hotel desk the day before. These four cannot. They run on park permits, herd movements and a fixed number of seats.
- 01Kilimanjaro climb by Lemosho Route (7-day)Every day on the mountain is paid to the park in advance, and the longer routes that actually get people to the top fill first in the dry windows.
- 023 Days Serengeti & Ngorongoro Group Camping SafariVehicles descend to the crater floor on a permit, and that permit runs six hours. Arrive without one and you are looking at it from the rim.
- 038 Days Great Wildebeest Calving Migration Safari from ArushaThe herds keep no calendar. Camps within reach of the crossings sell out for July to October a long way ahead, and shifting later is rarely an option.
- 04Serengeti Balloon Safari and authentic bush breakfastOne lift a morning, a fixed number of baskets, and it leaves before first light. There is no second attempt after lunch.
From late March into May the parks turn to black cotton and the coast keeps working.
The masika drops the heaviest rain of the Tanzanian year. Tracks in the Serengeti and the southern parks go to a mud a Land Cruiser does not always beat, and some camps simply shut for the season. Zanzibar gets it too, but in short violent bursts between clear hours, and nearly everything on the island is a covered lane, a farm or a museum.
Arusha, Tarangire, Manyara, Serengeti, Ngorongoro, then the island.
Lake ManyaraBy place — towns and parks
By kind of day — plains, mountain, reef or kitchen
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