10 Days Kenya and Tanzania Private Circuit

Your Topma Tours and Safaris guide meets you at the airport or your hotel for breakfast and a full briefing, then you head northwest. The first stop is the Rift Valley escarpment viewpoint, and further on Mount Longonot and Lake Naivasha come into view from the highway. Lunch is either at the lodge on arrival or taken on the road. The afternoon goes to a game drive in Lake Nakuru National Park, known for its flamingos and for both black and white rhino. Dinner and overnight at your lodge or hotel.

An early breakfast and a second game drive through the park before you leave, then the road south to the Maasai Mara, arriving in time for lunch. An afternoon game drive follows. Dinner and overnight at the lodge.

A full day in the reserve. Rolling savannah and a dense network of tracks are what make the Mara so productive for close-range viewing and photography, and the big cats here are entirely used to vehicles. Picnic lunch at the hippo pool, then game viewing again through the afternoon. Dinner and overnight at your lodge.

A Maasai homestead visit after breakfast, then the drive to the Isebania border with lunch on the way. Your Kenyan guide hands you over at the crossing; after immigration you continue into the Serengeti with your Tanzanian guide, game viewing as you go. Dinner and overnight at your camp or lodge.

A full day on the plains with picnic lunches in the vehicle. The big cats share this ground with spotted hyena and with the predators most visitors never notice, among them the serval and the aardwolf. Back to the lodge in the evening for dinner and overnight.

A final morning game drive in the Serengeti, then the road climbs east into the Ngorongoro Conservation Area with lunch en route. You reach the crater rim in the afternoon, with the floor spread out some two thousand feet below you. Dinner and overnight at the lodge or camp.

After breakfast you descend roughly 2,000 feet to the crater floor, game viewing as the road drops. The caldera walls hold in an unusual density of wildlife, including a small protected population of black rhino. Picnic lunch inside the crater, then the climb out and the drive to Arusha, where your hotel is booked on bed and breakfast.

After breakfast you are driven to the Namanga border, where your Tanzanian guide hands you back to your Kenyan guide once passports are stamped. The road continues to Amboseli with lunch on the way, arriving at the lodge or camp in the evening for dinner and overnight.

A full day of game drives with a picnic lunch. The swamps at the centre of the park are fed from Kilimanjaro and hold elephant and hippo year round, with plains game, antelope and a long bird list around them. If the cloud lifts, the summit sits behind them. Dinner and overnight at the lodge or camp.

Breakfast and checkout, then the drive north. Clear mornings often give the best Kilimanjaro views of the whole trip as you leave the park. Picnic lunch en route, arriving in Nairobi in the late afternoon for a drop at your hotel or the airport.