Game Parks and Sites | Egypt

Tanzania – Serengeti National Park & Ngorongoro Crater

Arusha is Tanzania’s safari hub. From here, you can take a trip to the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater. The Serengeti plains are the Africa of the movies. Immense herds of zebra and wildebeest migrate here to and from Kenya’s Masai Mara. Leopards and lions are often spotted. All the big five can be found in the park. That’s if luck is with you. Your campsite is rustic offering the rare opportunity to fall asleep (or lay nervous and sleepless awake) to the sounds of lions or hyenas. Breakfast and box lunches are provided during the day and dinner is prepared for you by your cook at night. After game driving in the park, you’ll head out, past Masai villages and Olduvai Gorge, to the Ngorongoro Crater. The next morning, you’ll wake up early and do a game drive in the unique ecosystem of the crater where there are plenty of lions, black rhino and elephant.

Tanzania – Lake Manyara National Park

Stretching for 50km along the base of the rusty-gold 600-metre high Rift Valley escarpment, Lake Manyara is a scenic gem, with a setting extolled by Ernest Hemingway as “the loveliest I had seen in Africa”.

The compact game-viewing circuit through Manyara offers a virtual microcosm of the Tanzanian safari experience.

Hundred-strong baboon troops by the road, blue monkeys scamper nimbly between the ancient mahogany trees, dainty bushbuck tread warily through the shadows, and outsized forest hornbills honk cacophonously in the high canopy.

Contrasting with the intimacy of the forest is the grassy floodplain and its expansive views eastward, across the alkaline lake, to the jagged blue volcanic peaks that rise from the endless Maasai Steppes. Large buffalo, wildebeest and zebra herds congregate on these grassy plains, as do giraffes – some so dark in coloration that they appear to be black from a distance.

Inland of the floodplain, a narrow belt of acacia woodland is the favoured haunt of Manyara’s legendary tree-climbing lions and impressively tusked elephants. Squadrons of banded mongoose dart between the acacias, while the diminutive Kirk’s dik-dik forages in their shade. Pairs of klipspringer are often seen silhouetted on the rocks above a field of searing hot springs that steams and bubbles adjacent to the lakeshore in the far south of the park.

Tanzania – Karatu

Karatu is a colourful bustling town and the gateway to the Ngorongoro Highlands. It’s a fun place to visit to practice your bartering for souvenirs.

Dusty but absolutely delightful, the main street is wide and always vibrant with people in brightly coloured clothes chatting, laughing and going about their daily activities.

Outside Karatu, rolling hills merge into the Ngorongoro Highlands. Here, mountainsides are covered in thick forest and cultivated areas are filled with farms and coffee plantations with villages scattered in between. Waterfalls tumble over rocks, sunbirds flit from flower to flower and elephant and buffalo follow ancient paths through the vegetation to rivers to drink and to mineral rich caves to extract salt.

Tanzania – Tarangire National Park

Herds of up to 300 elephants scratch the dry river bed for underground streams, while migratory wildebeest, zebra, buffalo, impala, gazelle, hartebeest and eland crowd the shrinking lagoons. It’s the greatest concentration of wildlife outside the Serengeti ecosystem – a smorgasbord for predators – and the one place in Tanzania with dry-country antelope such as the stately fringe-eared oryx and peculiar long-necked gerenuk.