Tanzania is three trips stitched into one.
Which northern-circuit safari actually reaches the Serengeti and which one turns round at the crater rim. What a Kilimanjaro route costs by the night. Whether the Mnemba boat is worth the early start. Reviews of every tour you can book in Tanzania.
A balloon over the Serengeti, a week on Kilimanjaro, a boat off Kendwa.
The four bookings a first Tanzanian itinerary tends to hang off. What each one costs and what the people who took it say.
01First lightSerengeti Balloon Safari and authentic bush breakfastUp before dawn, down on the plains for breakfast under an acacia. The single most booked thing on this site, by a wide margin.
02The first safari4 Days Group Camping SafariFour days, canvas, a cook and one Land Cruiser between the northern parks. The cheapest honest way onto the Serengeti.
03The reef morningMnemba Boat Trip and Dolphin Snorkel AdventureOut of Kendwa at seven for the Mnemba atoll, dolphins first and the reef afterwards. Back on the beach by lunch.
04The mountainKilimanjaro climb by Lemosho Route (7-day)Lemosho over seven days, which is the route that buys you the acclimatisation nights the short ones skip.
Three ways onto the Tanzanian plains, and what each one costs.
Canvas with a cook, a lodge bed every night, or a single day down the crater road. The difference is where you sleep and how many park gates you pass, never the animals.
Arusha for the parks, Moshi for the mountain, Zanzibar for everything wet.
Six places that decide an itinerary: the safari town, the island, the mountain town, the plains, the caldera and the harbour city that opens the south.
Tanzania’s most booked days out, starting in a balloon basket.
Every Tanzanian tour we have reviewed →The ones that fill first, with what each costs and how much of a day it takes.
1
Serengeti Balloon Safari and authentic bush breakfast
Leave your lodge around 5 a.m. for a hot air balloon flight over the Serengeti, guided by pilots such as Paul, Jeff, Kevin, or Mohamed. Fly year-round in Seronera, or seasonally from Kogatende, Ndutu, or Kiwarira. After roughly an hour in the air, celebrate with bubbly and a full English breakfast under an acacia tree.
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
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
Kilimanjaro is a walk, and the walk takes a week.
Five usable routes to the crater rim, and the only number that really matters is nights on the hill. Lemosho and the northern circuit buy the acclimatisation days; the short Marangu dash is where summit attempts come apart.
On Zanzibar the good day starts on a beach, not in Stone Town.
The old town is a morning on foot and it is worth the morning. Everything else leaves from the sand: tortoises on Prison Island, a sandbank that only exists at low tide, and the atoll off Matemwe where the dolphins genuinely are.
- 1Stone Town, Spice Tour, Prison Island with Lunchfrom $68
- 2Mnemba Boat Trip and Dolphin Snorkel Adventurefrom $50
- 3Prison Island and Nakupenda Boat Trip with Lunchfrom $39
The gap between a Zanzibar boat day and a week on the northern circuit.
Every tour on the site grouped by price. The island days are cheap, the plains are not, and the mountain is a category of its own.
Stone Town on foot, the spice farms, Prison Island and the reef boats out of Nungwi and Kendwa.
Waterfall and coffee days above Moshi, the crater road, and the flying day safaris out of Zanzibar.
Multi-day northern-circuit safaris, the balloon flights and the full Kilimanjaro routes.
- 1Serengeti Balloon Safari and authentic bush breakfastfrom $550
- 2Tanzania Classic – 7 Daysfrom $3,913
- 34 Days Group Camping Safarifrom $900
Three things that happen in Tanzania and almost nowhere else.
Game drives and white sand exist across half of Africa. Two million animals walking one clockwise circuit, a collapsed volcano with its own resident population, and a monkey that lives on one island do not.
The Great Migration
Close to two million wildebeest and zebra walk a clockwise loop through the Serengeti and back, calving on the southern short-grass plains around February and crossing the Mara River in the north from about July. It is not a single event you book a ticket for: where the herd is decides which camp you sleep in, so the month you travel writes the itinerary rather than the other way round.
- 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
The Ngorongoro Crater floor
The caldera is nineteen kilometres across with walls six hundred metres high, and most of its animals never leave. That is why a single day here shows you more than three on the open plains, and why the descent road is one-way with a time limit on the floor. Black rhino are the reason people come; the crater holds one of the last reliable populations in the country.
- 13 Days Serengeti & Ngorongoro Group Camping Safari★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 574 reviews
- 2Safari Serengeti And Ngorongoro★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 288 reviews
- 34-Day Safari from Arusha: Tarangire, Serengeti and Ngorongoro★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 173 reviews
The Jozani red colobus
The Zanzibar red colobus lives in this one forest and nowhere else on earth, and there are only a couple of thousand of them. They sit low in the branches beside the boardwalk and largely ignore visitors, which makes the photography easy and the conservation rules strict. The mangrove walk at the far end of the reserve is the quieter half of the same ticket.
- 1Jozani Forest & Sea Tortoises Sanctuary Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 204 reviews
- 2Dolphin tour, Jozani Forest, Jambiani Kuza Cave, Paje Beach &The Rock restaurent★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 164 reviews
- 3Zanzibar full day Jozani forest + Spice farm and stone town★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 90 reviews
Four Tanzanian bookings that will not wait for your arrival.
Plenty of this country can be arranged over a beer in Arusha the night before. These four run on aircraft seats, park permits and baskets with a fixed number of places in them.
- 01Serengeti Balloon Safari and authentic bush breakfastA basket holds a fixed number of passengers and there are only so many flights a morning. In migration season they go months out.
- 02Kilimanjaro climb by Lemosho Route (7-day)Park fees are paid per climber per night and the operator needs your dates well in advance. Nothing about a summit push gets arranged on arrival.
- 03Mikumi Safari Day Trip with Flights and MealThe day safaris out of Zanzibar run on a light-aircraft seat. The plane fills long before the park does.
- 04Mnemba Boat Trip and Dolphin Snorkel AdventureThe atoll is a conservation area with a cap on how many people are on the reef, and the boats leave early enough to matter.
March to May, when the black-cotton tracks close and the coast keeps working.
The long rains turn the southern Serengeti tracks to black cotton mud and shut most of the camps in Ruaha and Nyerere. Zanzibar gets wet in short bursts and carries on: Stone Town is stone, the spice farms are better in the wet, and the reef is usually flat by mid-morning.
By place — mainland and archipelago
By kind of day — plains, summit, reef or old town
Arusha, Tarangire, the crater, the Serengeti, then the ferry to Zanzibar.
Tarangire
Lake ManyaraJust reviewed: new tours out of Arusha, Moshi and Zanzibar.
The rest of the new reviews →
Kilimanjaro Airport Private Transfer from/to Moshi
Read our review →
Mikumi National Park & Udzungwa Water Falls 3 Days Group Tour
Read our review →
8 Days Safari to Mikumi, Ruaha & Udzungwa Mountains
Read our review →
7 Days Highlight of Tanzania Mid-Range Standard
Read our review →
Half-Day Dolphin & Snorkeling Tour in Mnemba Island Zanzibar
Read our review →
