8-Day Masai Mara Serengeti and Ngorongoro Lodge Safari with Olduvai

• Our East Africa Safari begins with a collection from your pre-tour hotel in Nairobi at 7:30 am, followed by a brief about the exciting journey ahead.
• Leaving Nairobi, we travel along the Great Rift Valley, taking in the scenery en route to our camp near Masai Mara National Reserve.
• After lunch at our tented camp, we set off on a game drive in the world-famous game reserve. This is one of the best game-viewing destinations in the world, considered the heartland of authentic African safaris.
• Returning to the luxury tented camp, we have dinner and relax after our first game drive in Kenya, East Africa. The camp is located on the banks of a river, inside a private conservancy area, where various animals are often spotted.

• The whole of day two is set aside for game viewing in Masai Mara. The iconic plains of Masai Mara are home to more than 450 species of wild animals, including the Big Five - lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, and buffalo. Today, you experience the wild savannahs of Africa, encountering an abundance of wildlife, including hippos, wild dogs, crocodiles, wildebeest, zebras, hyenas, giraffes, jackals, and many more creatures. Masai Mara is best known for the spectacular wildlife migration that sees millions of wildebeest, zebras, gazelles, and other herbivores stampeding across the plains and rivers. Every year, this mass migration, known as the Great Migration, attracts a host of predators along the migratory route between Kenya's Masai Mara and the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.
• You also have the chance to take an optional balloon ride over the plains of Masai Mara. This optional balloon ride costs extra and is one of the most spectacular ways of viewing Masai Mara and the abundance of wildlife inhabiting the reserve.

Stay at the same comfortable camp near Masai Mara, sleeping in tented rooms with en-suite bathrooms and verandahs.

• Rise and shine for breakfast at camp before driving to the Isebania Border Post and crossing into Tanzania.
• Our first stop in Tanzania is Lake Victoria, the biggest lake in Africa. We stay at Speke Bay Lodge, a mere 15 km from Serengeti National Park on Tanzania's Northern Safari Circuit.
• This afternoon, you are free to relax at the lodge on the south-eastern shores of the Great Lake. Alternatively, you can go fishing or take an optional boat ride, at extra cost, on Lake Victoria. The lodge is located on the Speke Gulf, named after British explorer John Hanning Speke, the first European to arrive at Lake Victoria and identify the Great Lake as the Nile's source in the mid-1800s.

• Head into the remote western corridor of the Serengeti National Park, entering at the Ndabaka Gate.
• The entire day is spent game viewing in the Serengeti, stopping for a picnic lunch en route. Serengeti National Park is one of the leading safari destinations in Africa, seen as the original home of the traditional African safari, along with Masai Mara. Forming part of the same ecosystem as Mara, the Serengeti Plains also offer the quintessential African savannah setting, only more vast than the Kenyan counterpart, at 14 763 km².
• After our game drive, we have dinner at Ikoma Safari Camp (or similar).

• Day five is set aside for exploring the legendary Serengeti National Park on game drives. This massive wildlife reserve is famous for the same annual migration as Masai Mara. Over a million herbivores move south from the northern to the southern plains of Serengeti in the short rainy season (October and November), returning north after the long rainy season (April to June). Serengeti Park offers superb wildlife viewing year-round, so we should see plenty of plains game and predators roaming the grasslands.
• At the end of the day, we return to Serengeti Ikoma Tented Lodge (or similar) for dinner and another overnight stay.

• Embark on an early morning game drive in Serengeti National Park before having breakfast back at the lodge.
• Make our way to Olduvai Gorge, a deep ravine in the East African Rift Valley.
• En route, we stop for a picnic lunch and enjoy game viewing. The gorge features one of the world's most famous archaeological sites, hosting some of the earliest fossils of our humanoid ancestors.
• Visit the Olduvai Gorge Museum to see the excavated remains of our ancestors, including Homo erectus remains that date as far back as 1.2 million years ago.
• From Olduvai, we continue to Ngorongoro Forest Tented Lodge (or similar), where we have dinner and spend the night.

• On day seven, we enjoy breakfast early in the morning and descend some 600 m down into the crater for an action-packed day of game viewing in this wildlife paradise.
• Our 4x4 game drive takes us through the diverse habitats of the crater floor, where we encounter a variety of wild animals. While in the crater, we have a picnic lunch. The Ngorongoro Crater is renowned for its high concentration of animals, with most wildlife species represented here. Due to the high density of animal populations, we are likely to see an excellent array of animals in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.
• Ascending the crater walls after our game-viewing adventure, we return to Ngorongoro Forest Tented Lodge (or similar) for dinner and our last overnight stay.

• Our final morning starts with a leisurely breakfast before we travel to Arusha.
• We take packed lunches along with us from the lodge to enjoy en route.
• Arriving in Arusha by midday, you have the option of concluding your safari here or continuing to Nairobi in Kenya.
• From the Kibo Palace Hotel in Arusha, we catch the 2:00 pm shuttle to Nairobi, where you are transferred to the airport or your post-tour accommodation.

Parting ways in Nairobi, you leave the safari having experienced unforgettable game viewing in three of the finest wildlife havens of Africa.