8-Day Tanzania Budget Camping Safari

After breakfast, you depart for Lake Manyara National Park on a full-day game drive with picnic lunches. The journey will take you to Lake Manyara Jambo Lodge for your dinner and overnight stay. Stretching for 50km along the base of the rusty gold 600m high Rift Valley escarpment, Lake Manyara is a scenic gem with a setting praised by American novelist 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. From the entrance gate, the road winds through a lush jungle-like groundwater forest where hundreds of baboon troops lounge nonchalantly along the roadside. Blue monkeys scamper nimbly between the ancient mahogany trees, dainty bushbuck tread warily through the shadows, and outsized forest hornbills honk loudly in the high canopy.

After breakfast, proceed to Serengeti National Park for a game drive with picnic lunches. Your dinner and overnight stay will be at a campsite inside the Serengeti National Park. A million wildebeest, each one driven by the same ancient rhythm, fulfilling its instinctive role in the inescapable cycle of life, go on a frenzied three-week bout of territorial conquests and mating. Then, a brief population explosion occurs as more than 8 000 wildebeest calves are born daily. After that, it is survival of the fittest as they plunge through crocodile-infested waters on the annual exodus to the north. Now, the 1000km pilgrimage starts all over again.

The entire day is set aside for game drives in the Serengeti. After breakfast, we depart on an amazing game drive. The great diversity of Serengeti's wildlife is evident here—look for buffalo, hippos, elephants, giraffes, antelopes, Thompson's and Grant's gazelle, and lions. You will be more than astonished if you are there during the spectacular wildebeest migration. In the late afternoon, we will venture out on another game drive. Again, animals in the trees, flying, camouflaged in the bush, rivers, and streams. You will see animals everywhere! Monkeys, birds, and huge jungle cats—lion, leopard, and cheetah—watching the world go by. Rhino, gazelle, antelope, and massive elephants by the hundreds. This is the adventure of a lifetime!

After breakfast, we will have a game drive in Serengeti National Park to see the park's beauty. Then, after a picnic lunch, we have a game drive en route to Ngorongoro Crater for dinner and an overnight stay at a campsite inside the Ngorongoro Crater.

Breakfast will be ready at around 5:50am, and we will descend the crater at 6:00am. Today's game drive will take approximately 6 to 7 hours, with a picnic lunch at a site on the crater floor. Next, we venture onto the crater floor for an up-close view of the resident animals of this World Heritage Site. Finally, drive back to Jambo Lodge and Campsite in the afternoon for dinner and your overnight stay. The Ngorongoro Crater provides excellent game viewing all year round. The wildlife here makes up a permanent population because grazing and water supplies are plentiful throughout the seasons.

We will meet you at your campsite at 7:30am and have a safari briefing before departing for Tarangire National Park. Your first safari experience will be the thrilling game drive through the vastness of Tarangire National Park. You will arrive in good time for lunch. In the afternoon, we will have a game drive through the park and later drive back to Arusha for our overnight stay at Arusha Tourist Inn Hotel.

After breakfast, we will take you to Kilimanjaro International Airport, or you can extend your trip with a beach holiday in Zanzibar. Today marks the last day of our safari.