3-Day Serengeti & Ngorongoro Private Camping Safari

Following breakfast, your journey to Serengeti will begin at 7:30am. You’ll travel along a lengthy and somewhat bumpy road, providing you with a fascinating en-route game drive. This route will lead you through the crater highlands, eventually opening up to the vast Serengeti plains. The drive typically takes about six to seven hours. Should the weather be clear, you’ll make a brief stop at the crater viewpoint past the Ngorongoro gate. Here, you can take a quick 10-minute break to marvel at the Ngorongoro Crater from above before you continue your journey to Serengeti. You’ll take a break for a hot lunch at the Serengeti Naabi Hill gate, and then proceed to check in at the park for an afternoon game drive. As the sun sets, you’ll make your way to your campsite for dinner and your overnight stay. NB: You’ll have the opportunity to visit a Maasai village at no extra cost. However, it’s become a more commercial experience in recent years, causing most guests to opt out. Overnight at Lala Salama Serengeti Camp • Mid-range tented camp located inside Serengeti NP.

The Seronera valley is the heart of the Serengeti and a year-round game-viewing area. Permanent water, rocky kopjes and short-grass plains create the highest density of big cats in Africa: roughly 1 lion per 10 km², and the best leopard sightings on the circuit.

Mornings start before sunrise to catch the cats while they are still active; midday is a slow picnic in the shade of an acacia. In the afternoon we work the riverine fig trees for leopards and the kopjes for resting prides. Distances are long but every stop is worth it.

Where you sleep tonight

Lala Salama Serengeti Camp

Tented camp, Serengeti

Classic tented camp pitched in the heart of the Serengeti — warm hosting, hearty bush meals and easy access to the plains right from your tent flap.

You will leave the campsite at approximately 6:00am with your packed breakfast for a sunrise game drive, a time when animals are most active. You’ll have a breakfast picnic in the bush and then continue your game drive before returning to the camp for a hot lunch. Afterward, you’ll load up the vehicle, depart from the camp, and continue to Ngorongoro, where you will have dinner and spend the night at Ngorongoro Simba Campsite. Overnight at Ngorongoro Simba Campsite • On the crater rim of Ngorongoro Crater.

The Seronera valley is the heart of the Serengeti and a year-round game-viewing area. Permanent water, rocky kopjes and short-grass plains create the highest density of big cats in Africa: roughly 1 lion per 10 km², and the best leopard sightings on the circuit.

Mornings start before sunrise to catch the cats while they are still active; midday is a slow picnic in the shade of an acacia. In the afternoon we work the riverine fig trees for leopards and the kopjes for resting prides. Distances are long but every stop is worth it.

Where you sleep tonight

Ngorongoro Simba Campsite

Public campsite, crater rim

Legendary crater-rim public campsite — dome tents pitched on the very edge of Ngorongoro at 2,400 m.

You’ll start your day by getting into the safari vehicle at 6:00am and heading down to the crater with a packed breakfast in hand. This unique place is home to a wide variety of East African wildlife, including the rare black rhino. If you’re lucky, you might spot one. The crater is quite large, about 260 square kilometres in size and with a diameter of approximately 20 kilometres, so you’ll spend around five to six hours exploring it. After your exploration, you’ll return to the campsite for a hot lunch. Following that, you’ll begin your journey back to Arusha, with an expected arrival time of around 5-6:00pm. You can also opt to be dropped off at either Arusha or Kilimanjaro Airport.

The Ngorongoro Crater is a 260 km² collapsed caldera with 600 m walls, and the highest density of large mammals on Earth. Inside the crater floor live around 25,000 large animals, including the densest population of black-maned lions and one of the last strongholds of the eastern black rhino.

We descend at first light when the floor is still in shadow and the cats are working. A picnic breakfast on the rim, a full morning circuit past the soda lake's flamingos and Lerai Forest's elephants, then a climb back up the escarpment in time for a late lunch.