Luxury Safari with migration in Grumeti

Arrive at JRO Kilimanjaro airport, collect your luggage and go through customs. You will be met by our driver for the transfer to the hotel in Arusha. Depending on your flight time, we can organize an additional excursion (city tour, coffee plantation tour, bike ride, Lake Duluti visit or a half day game viewing in Arusha national Park). Dinner is included at the lodge today. Enjoy the large gardens, and swimming pool, you can relax among lush vegetation, visit the neighboring coffee estate to prepare for your early wake up call tomorrow.

Breakfast at the hotel and meet with your driver. You will have a private vehicle for the next few days while you visit Tarangire within the wonderful Chem Chem Concession. Surrender to a lifestyle with a slowed-down pace. Inviting for a true connection with the wildlife and nature surrounding you, inviting a type of tranquility that goes beyond the confines of a vehicle.

The transfer takes about 2.5 hours and you can settle at the lodge before the afternoon game activity. Chat to your guide and plan your days. At Chem Chem Lodge you’ll find yourself set between watering holes, savannah grasslands and a vast salt pan, where the immense sense of space is rivalled only by sublime privacy and sophisticated comforts.

After breakfast, you will be met by our safari guide who will look after you for the next few days. Drive through to Lake Manyara National park. Spend a few hours game viewing in the park and stop for a light picnic lunch. The park offers a wilderness experience in diverse habitats, from its Rift Valley soda lake to dense woodlands and steep mountainsides. The shores of the lake, encrusted with pink flamingo, attract more than 400 species of birds, depending on the season. Besides the large predators, you can see various herds of buffalo, while the Masai giraffes and impalas roam the lake shores and the forested valley slopes. Exit the park and continue to the Ngorongoro Crater Rim to your camp. Dinner is included at the camp. Meaning ‘circle’ in Maa, the language of the Maasai, Entamanu is the perfect name for this luxury camp on the Ngorongoro Crater edge.

Today is a very early wake up in order to travel down the Ngorongoro Crater and enjoy a couple of hours of game viewing before the crowds arrive. The Ngorongoro Crater has many nicknames — Africa's "eighth wonder of the world" and "Africa's Eden," to name a few. But even without these lofty nicknames, the crater is a stunning a sight.

Formed 2.5 million years ago after an extinct volcano collapsed on itself, the caldera is largest of its kind in the world. You will have the best chance to view the Big Five, and enjoy a packed picnic style lunch before going back to camp.

Today drive back to Manyara and say your good-byes to your safari guide before the flight to the Grumeti Airstrip. Arrive at the airstrip and transfer to the lodge. Located in the remote western reaches of the Serengeti National Park, there are very few lodges in this pristine section of the park, allowing for an intimate and exclusive Serengeti safari experience. Twice-daily game drives from the lodge often encounter large lion prides and clans of hyena, big herds of resident plains game as well as the special black-and-white colobus monkeys, found nowhere else in the Serengeti.

During the month of March (end) and June, you can get the chance to view some splinter herds from the Great Migration that usually congregate in the western corridor before moving north. Depending on the season and amount of rain, these large masses of animals can be seen crossing the Grumeti River. Back at the lodge, spacious decks are perfect for enjoying sundowners overlooking the river and the lodge’s sparkling rim-flow swimming pool provides a view of the seasonal hippo pods below. The proximity to water draws a profusion of wildlife throughout the day and night.

Last morning in the bush, enjoy breakfast in camp and enjoy a meandering drive to the airstrip. Say your good byes to your safari guide and take the schedule flight to JRO airport. Depending on your onward flight back home we can add a day room nearby, or spend time at leisure to check in. Alternatively we can extend your safari with a stay in Kenya's Mara Mara to continue with the game viewing, or combine with a South Tanzania park, or an extension to Rwanda for gorilla trekking.