Everything you might want to know about my African photo safari in Tanzania (with loads of pics)

After five years of planning, this is everything I learned about going on safari.

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This is a rare break from talking about publishing to give you a detailed account of my photo safari to Tanzania. So many of you asked about my safari I thought you would enjoy this deep dive. Additionally, finding good information on how to put together a good safari photo kit without spending $10,000 isn’t easy. Even finding a good breakdown of a safari isn’t easy, so I wanted to have this reference out in the world so that if anyone wants to know what it takes or where to start, they could easily access everything they might need.

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​We have been planning a safari with my wife’s family since 2018. We originally planned to go in 2020, but…well, the world exploded and we had to put off our plans, which meant we have been talking about this safari for five years. I should clarify that by we I mean my wife’s family that planned it all. I mostly showed up and took pretty pictures.

Even though I didn’t spend hundreds of hours planning this safari, I did spend at least dozens of hours talking about it and mulling over options. Additionally, I did spend a ton of time thinking about the gear I would bring to the safari, so this roundup is going to be a little bit of reporting what I learned from my in-laws, a decent amount of first-hand experience, and a whole lot of information about the best vacation I’ve ever taken in my life.

Before I dig in, I’m the first person to admit that there’s a massive amount of privilege in being able to even go on a safari, and being tended to by local porters in tents made me feel more like a colonizer than anything I’ve ever done. If you feel some sort of way about safaris, then I get it. I had a lot of reservations going into this, but even with them, I still had a life-changing experience.

Additionally, while I have included a lot of pictures here, they are not fully processed. You might find some pictures where the horizon isn’t level or could use a little color correction. Since this was a fun trip, I decided not to spend countless hours mastering these images before I showed them to you, as they would likely never be done if I waited that long. Good is the enemy of great, but great is the enemy of finished.

*** Please note that if you are reading this via email, Substack only sent out a partial version and the article will eventually stop without notice. If you want to read the whole 7,500-word article and see the dozens of pictures, then go to this website.***

Can’t I just look at animals in a zoo?

I will be honest, I went into this experience with the expectation it would be like going to a zoo. Nothing I read properly conveyed just how different a safari is from a zoo. I have been to zoos, and they are nice for a couple of hours, but I have never been interested in going to a zoo for ten days straight.

A safari is completely different. Not only are the animals just cold chilling in their natural habitat, but they comingle together at the same time. Ostriches, zebras, wildebeests, buffalos, and a thousand types of birds just cold chilling with hippos and giraffes in the same area.

Before seeing it, I had no context to even visualize what I’m talking about because the best you get in the USA is a herd of cows, or sheep, or maybe wild horses, but every year 1.5 million wildebeests and 400,000 zebras migrate across Tanzania along with millions of other animals. Animals are literally everywhere.

I can’t overstate how much different it is to even a wild safari park. There is literally no context I can give that could accurately make you visualize it unless you see it. Seriously, they just wander through your camp and walk next to your car. Look at this lion! It’s just strolling alongside these cars like it owns the place…and it does.

It literally used our car as camouflage to hunt.

Then, it just went hunting for a zebra as if we weren’t even there (don’t worry, the zebra survived.)

It’s nature happening all around you, constantly, and they in general don’t care that you exist in their space. Every time I’ve ever tried to get close to a wild animal, it dashed away…until this trip. The animals have lived with safaris for their whole lives and so nature just happens around you. It’s literally wild. The closest thing I’ve ever come to it is snorkeling and just watching everything happen in the water around you. Even then, though, you don’t have killer sharks meandering next to you. I mean, we could literally reach out and touch a zebra (but we never would because that’s against the rules).

Everything is happening everywhere all at once. What’s also wild is that you can be in the same national park with the same people in different cars and have extremely different experiences. I didn’t talk to two people who had similar experiences my whole trip.

Is it dangerous and/or strenuous?

No, or at least I didn’t find any part of it dangerous, even when a lion rubbed up against our car. We were almost always in a well-fortified Toyota Land Cruiser the whole time, high up from the group, except when we were at camp. I highly recommend choosing a similar car for your trip. I was in an open Jeep for an evening safari and it was the only time I was truly terrified a lion might leap into the car and murder me. It was completely safe, but I am prone to worry.

Additionally, the camps were guarded by locals and we were escorted to and from our tents after dark. Sometimes, animals did walk through the camp, especially in the evening, but they were always chill.

The biggest misconception about safaris is that they are strenuous, but there is no hiking (unless you choose to do it) and you’re almost exclusively sitting in your car looking at animals. While a safari does fall into the category of ecotourism, it is one of the least strenuous vacations I have ever been on in my life. That said, the roads were very bumpy.

Private vs. group safari

The first question after you decide to go is probably what kind of safari should you book. There are two main types: group safaris and private safaris.

What is the difference between a group safari and a private safari?

A group safari is where you are part of a group of people who are booked for the same safari itinerary. It means you are not in control of the safari. Group safaris are a good opportunity to meet some new, nice and interesting people and make friends.

A private safari on the other hand is where you have control of your itinerary. You usually get to decide, where to go, what time, activities, where to stay. You make all the choices of course with some recommendation with your tour operator. Most people usually prefer private safaris. -Wild Whispers Africa

That’s not the only choice you have to make about the type of safari you want, though. There are some safaris where you visit private reserves and others at public parks. There are ones where you stay at a public campsite and others with private accommodations. In all, you will make just shy of a million decisions to customize your safari to your tastes.

While there are certainly more expensive safaris, ours was on the higher end. We had a private tour with a private guide for 10 days. Often, you are in a group of 15-20 travelers in several cars that travel together. We did not have that experience. We had our own car that was just for us and lots of flexibility every day. We also stayed at private camps with around 15-20 tents on the high end. All food was provided for us, and we only had to pay for certain types of drinks.

We went baller, thanks to my in-laws. It’s very possible to do a safari much cheaper than we did, but we went all out.

Why Tanzania?

When it comes to safaris, there are generally three different countries people go to in Africa; South Africa, Kenya, and Tanzania. If you want to do gorilla trekking then there’s also Uganda and Rwanda, but for a safari, you’re generally going to end up at one of those three places, and they each have their own vibe.

South African safaris are wonderful if you want to do other things. If you go to Kenya or Tanzania, then you’re probably going on a hardcore safari, but South Africa has a lot more things to do. They have a lovely wine country, and other tourist traps, of which a safari is one of many. You don’t see as many animals as in the other two countries, but I’m sure it’s a lovely time.

The advantage of Kenya is the Mara River. If you’ve ever seen images of zebras and other animals trying to cross a river and being eaten by crocodiles, this is usually from the Mara River. People camp out on the river just to watch the migration happen.

Honestly, I’m so glad we didn’t do that part. We were able to watch one wildebeest nearly get eaten by a crocodile when crossing a different river and it was disgustingly morbid. It broke my heart and I could never watch something like that again and it would be too soon.

Look at these beautiful animals. Why would you want to watch them die?

I can’t tell you how happy I am that we chose not to do the Mara River crossing, and if you’re not going to do that, then you see the biggest variety of animals in Tanzania, depending on the time of year. So, why did we end up choosing Tanzania? It had a lot to do with the Great Migration.

Throughout the year, East Africa’s wide-open grasslands are the setting for the Great Migration as millions of wildebeests, Burchell’s zebras, antelopes and other herd animals make the trek from the Serengeti in Tanzania to the Masai Mara in Kenya. While significant numbers into the multi-thousands (mega-herds) do clump together, more often there are smaller herds spread throughout a region or multiple regions. All of these herds make the trek with two things in mind: fresh grazing lands and water.

Though it is sometimes referred to as annual event, the Great Migration is actually a fluid and continuous, year-long journey of animals migrating through Tanzania and Kenya. In total, this circuit spans some 1,200 miles. Yes, dramatic river crossings are part of the migration, but they are only a small part of a far more complex chain of events that play out from season to season across two different countries. These events include mating rituals, calving and the shifting fortunes of the herd, all of which are influenced by the subtle changes in rainfall that occur year over year. -Abercrombie and Kent

Courtesy of Abercrombie and Kent

Depending on the time of year, the animals are at different places in their migration. However, you can see that the majority of the migration happens in Tanzania throughout the year.

One of the biggest things you have to mitigate against in a safari is that even though these are the general times animals will be in certain places, they are animals and they don’t follow any strict schedule. In fact, one of the biggest problems of camping out on the Mara River is that you’ll often see nothing because you misjudged the migration by even a couple of days.

Based on the itinerary I’ll discuss below, we probably should have come to Tanzania between October-March if we wanted to see the migration in our path. However, if you come during that time you have to deal with the rainy season, and this is a good time to mention that all the roads are dirt that get washed out in heavy rain and turn to mud pretty easily. Look at the dirt under that hyena’s feet. The whole trip was driving on that all day every day.

These roads were hard to navigate even in the dry season, but in the rainy season, they must be impossible. We got hit with a little rain a couple of times and I honestly thought we were going to get stuck even in the little bit of mud we found.

On top of that, because the roads wash away, they are rebuilt in different spots every year. When our guide told us that the roads literally change positions every year, I was floored. I had been to some really rural areas, but I had never heard of whole byways being rebuilt in different places.

On the other end, if you travel deep in the dry season a lot of the vegetation has been burnt or eaten, making it less appealing to animals.

Because of that, we chose to travel during a shoulder season.

The definition of shoulder season varies by destination, but it typically means the period of time between a region’s peak season and offseason. This timespan can last months or just weeks. For instance, if a place’s peak season is summer and its offseason is winter, then the shoulder season would be spring and fall. Alternatively, a place may experience peak travel during a holiday weekend, but demand will drop off the weekend before or after — these times can also be considered shoulder season. -Nerd Wallet

For Tanzania, that meant traveling either during February or June, and we chose June, even though it meant the Great Migration was on the other side of the country (and we would have to travel for hours to see it).

Additionally, while I’m sure Kenya is also lovely, one thing that was incredible about Tanzania is that they had several ecosystems to explore. Tarangire was home to a near-infinite number of elephants and had a lot of swampy marshes for them to play in.

Meanwhile, Ngorongoro Crater felt like an alpine mountain and had the biggest variety of animals that you could see at any one moment.

And then the Serengeti was a vast grassland that felt endless. In fact, Serengeti means endless plain in Maasai.

By planning the trip the way my in-laws did, we were able to see tons of different ecosystems and have the best chance of seeing the biggest variety of animals. I will discuss below why I think that’s a good move, but I am very grateful we moved camps every couple of days to get the best variety of animals.

Kenya is also roughly 1.5x as expensive as Tanzania, so you get more for your money if you choose Tanzania.

Flight

The hardest part of the whole trip was getting from Los Angeles to Kilimanjaro Airport so we could start the safari. Once we got there, literally everything was planned for us. We had a driver for the entire trip from the airport going in through to the airport coming out of the bush. There was certainly a lot of driving, but it was surprisingly comfortable even for somebody that doesn’t love car travel.

One negative of Tanzania is they have very few international flights. In fact, from Los Angeles, we only found about six, and four of them connected in Doha, Qatar. After the horrible conditions workers faced preparing for the World Cup, I had no interest in supporting Qatar, but going through Amsterdam or Paris would have been nearly double the expense, so we swallowed our ethics and went through Doha. After we arrived in Tanzania several people told us they flew into Nairobi airport and then took a short flight to Kilimanjaro, but that option wasn’t available from Los Angeles. That flight seemed to only exist out of JFK in New York City.

The flight was brutal. It’s the ninth-longest flight in the world. From Los Angeles, we flew for 16 hours to Doha. I slept for eight hours and there was still 8 hours left when I got up. It’s mind-boggling. Then, we had another six-hour flight to Tanzania.

If you’re making a similar trip I recommend doing a stopover for a day to get your sea legs under you before you continue on to your final destination. We booked the InterContinental Doha Beach & Spa | Luxury Hotel in Doha for a night and basically spent 36 hours sleeping in our room, but it was worth it. You can get a free visa in Qatar if you plan to stay there for a night. I recommend it for your sanity, but it is an ethically dicey decision.

If you don’t want to leave the airport, you can book the Oryx Airport Hotel - Doha Airport Hotel for a few hours in order to get some sleep. We had a 7-hour layover on the way home and having this respite to get some sleep was absolutely critical to feeling like a human. It’s not very large, but the bed is nice, the food is good, and it’s quiet.

Gear

Many people asked about what camera equipment I brought to Tanzania to capture all the shots you see in this post, so let’s break it down. I did a ton of research before I left and really couldn’t find anyone who gave a good set of gear for a regular human to bring with them. Every article I read talked about putting together a $10,000+ kit and I just didn’t have that kind of budget. So, I built my own.

The one thing that frustrated me about going on safari was that there was nowhere to rent gear in Tanzania. I looked for a long time. I could have rented gear and brought it with me, but that totally defeated the purpose. I used to be a professional photographer, so I knew I could put together a decent budget kit without spending a billion dollars. This is what I came up with for our trip.

THE BAG -TARION Camera Backpack Waterproof Camera Bag Waterproof Certified IPX5 Large Capacity Side Access with 15.6 Inch Laptop Compartment Rain Cover for Women Men Photographer Lens Tripod Tablets

I tested several bags and this won out in both form and function. Mainly, I wanted something that could store both camera gear and additional materials like clothes or snacks. This bag has a hard case on the bottom perfect for a body and three lenses, tons of pockets, and an upper compartment to store an extra set of clothes or something else while you travel. Plus, it looks chic.

MAIN LENS - Tamron 18-400mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC HLD (8-Pin) APS-C (DX) Lens for Nikon F-Mount {72} B028

I’m a Nikon guy. I’ve always loved Nikon. I looked into Canon and Sony too, but the heart wants what it wants. I specifically built my kit around this lens because it’s compact and lightweight. You can hold it without a tripod and as long as you have a high enough shutter speed can still get good results. I did end up shooting at 800 ISO for most of the trip to get this lens to cooperate with me.

This lens doesn’t exist almost anywhere anymore, but it was only $550 on KEH, a used camera gear reseller, so if you can find it anywhere then it’s pretty cost conscious. The one downside of this lens is you can’t use a teleconverter with it and still use the autofocus. So, I didn’t get one of those. I think I still ended up with great pictures. I feared we wouldn’t get close enough to animals for my lens to get good pictures, but that ended up being an unfounded concern.

SECONDARY LENS - AF-S NIKKOR 85mm f/1.8G

This lens is the love of my life. It was the workhorse of my old fashion photography business, and I specifically brought it for portraits. It ended up being very useful in the Masaai village we visited. It’s not necessary, but it was really nice to have one.

DREAM LENS - Tamron SP 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DI VC USD G2 AF Lens For Nikon {95} with Tripod Mount (A022)

Were I to do this again, I would buy this lens along with a 2x teleconverter. The lens I had was a 22x magnification, but with the teleconverter this would bring me up to 1200mm, or a 66x magnification. I really dropped the ball not investing in this one for the trip, and I’m kicking myself now because there are a few times it would have given me unbelievable results.

MAIN CAMERA - Nikon D7500

There were a lot of reasons I chose this camera, but it mostly came down to it being the best choice for the 18-400mm lens. I wanted a nice camera with a fast shutter and high ISO, and this is the one that fit the bill for me.

SECONDARY CAMERA - PANASONIC LUMIX ZS200 4K Digital Camera, DC-ZS200K, 20.1 Megapixel 1-Inch Sensor, 15X LEICA DC VARIO-ELMAR Lens, F3.3-6.4 Aperture, HYBRID O.I.S. Stabilization, 3-Inch LCD , DC-ZS200K

My wife didn’t want a fancy camera, so we got her this very good camera. It doesn’t have as fast a shutter or any of the professional features I wanted, but it was a really nice camera for the price. You can get it for $600, and if you just want a workhorse camera without a lot of thinking, this one took some great pictures. Plus, it has a bonkers long lens.

TERTIARY CAMERA - iPhone 12 Pro Max

Do not sleep on how good the iPhone is for taking pictures. When it comes to landscapes, low light, or selfies, I’m constantly relying on my iPhone. Even though I took this camera set-up to Paris, I still ended up using my iPhone most of the time.

MEMORY - Both our cameras took SD cards, so I bought two 512GB cards, along with a few 32GB cards for my wife’s camera, that lasted the whole trip. I ended up shooting 8,600 pictures, and I was nearly constantly shooting for ten 8+hour days. I can’t imagine you taking much more than me. Because this wasn’t a pro shoot, I ended up not shooting RAW, though, so that might influence how much memory you bring. I believe the D7500 can only take up to a 512GB card, which is why I got two of them.

I should also say that I brought this same set-up to Paris last year and it worked great for that as well. Here are some pictures from that trip.

All of this gear should fit inside your backpack. Aside from wanting a little bit faster lens, these were great choices for me while being both versatile and compact. I was able to pack just one small travel bag along with my backpack instead of needing multiple cases to carry things.

Also, don’t forget a cable or hub to get your photos off your camera during your trip. If you don’t want to worry about that, Nikon has an app that allows you to connect your camera to your phone that works fab. I ended up forgetting my hub, but this app allowed me to back everything up for peace of mind.

CLOTHING - I’ve spent the last couple of years creating a travel wardrobe full of moisture-wicking, fast-dry clothing mostly from Ably and Bluffworks, but also including quick-dry underwear that can be washed easily and Merino wool socks that can be worn for multiple days. People ask how I can travel with just a backpack and a carry-on piece of luggage, and this is how I manage it.

I really love Bluffwork’s airline pants, Ibex’s Merino wool jackets, and Ably’s t-shirts. I also got some of these Merino wool socks. Overall, you can mix and match these really easily together. If you plan on trekking in the mud, like I did one day, I would also recommend some sort of travel cargo pants. I also picked up a pair of black-on-black hiking shoes that I wore the whole trip. I generally like the Cariuma Ibis, but I didn’t want to wear them hiking Kilimanjaro.

This is not the cheapest wardrobe, but it’s so easy to clean and lasts forever. Every time I travel I just throw it all in a bag and go.

Oh, and I also bought a very dumb hat which was very helpful in the sun.

Itinerary

Now we’re getting into the nitty-gritty of what we did every day. I had very little to do with setting the overall itinerary, except for the balloon ride that I advocated for pretty strongly, and hiking Kilimanjaro the first day we got to Tanzania. I know my in-laws spent hours upon hours on the phone with ATR, our tour company, to plan everything. It was originally 7 days, but as time went on we added more and more days to build out the tour. It ended up being a 10-day safari, and it felt like it was paced just right. We had plenty of time every day to do everything we wanted to do and didn’t feel rushed.

A note about hotels/camps. While they all had wifi and power, none had wifi in the room, and many times we had to leave our electronics in the lodge because there was no power in the rooms. Even then, the internet barely worked intermittently. Plan accordingly.

Lots of people asked what we would do for 10 days since most safaris are 3-7 days. Before I left, I literally had no idea, but now I can say that you see more animals in a more relaxed environment. We were able to veer off the beaten path and catch things because we weren’t in a rush. Trust me, after you spend days seeing animals you still want to see more animals. I wasn’t getting tired of animals until the 9th day, and even then it was more because it just took a long time to find them. I could have easily spent way more time seeing animals if they were easier to find.

DAY 0 - Hiking Kilamanjaro

After spending 16 hours getting to Doha, 24 hours sleeping in Doha, 6 hours getting from Doha to Kilimanjaro airport, and sleeping again, the first logical thing to do when you wake up in Arusha the first day of your vacation is hiking Mount Kilimanjaro. Originally, I really just wanted to touch Kilamanjaro to say I had been there, but the only option presented to us was a day hike up what they called the “Coca-Cola path” because it was so easy.

Well, let me tell you, the “easy hike” was almost completely uphill with a very steep incline for multiple hours. It ended up being an 8 km (~5 mi.) hike each way with an almost 1,000-foot rise in elevation. It was a credit to how much time I spent building my stamina before the trip because I honestly don’t think I could have made it at any other time in my life than the last couple of years.

On top of being steep, it was also treacherous with tons of slippery rocks that you had to use for balance and others that just fell out from under you. I woke up the following day with the sorest legs of my whole life, but we did make it to Mandara hut after a four-hour drive and a three-hour hike. Along the way, we saw monkeys, which were cool, but it was very, very tiring.

This was also the only part of the trip that wasn’t organized by the tour company. We ended up going with somebody from Viator, who was very cheerful, but not very accommodating to the fact that none of us were in our 20s anymore. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I’m glad I did it, but from now on when something tells me a hike is easy, I’m going to ask “Compared to what?”

Additionally, they don’t tell you it’s a four-hour drive each way. We left at 6:30 am and didn’t get back to the hotel until after 8:00 pm.

Luckily, for the next 10 days all I had to do was sit in a car for most of the day and nurse my sore legs. This was also the only day that I desperately needed cargo pants instead of my nice airline pants. I ended up getting one pair too muddy to wear for most of the trip.

My wife and mother-in-law took a cooking class taught by local mothers while we were hiking which they loved. They made samosas and other local dishes, and we got to eat the spoils when we got back to the resort.

We were also told later that we should have booked the hike through our tour company since they were responsible for anything bad happening to us.

DAY 1 - Arusha to Tarangire

After waking up very sore and barely hobbling to our buffet breakfast at Rivertrees Country Inn in Arusha, our tour guide Godfrey picked us up in his Landcruiser and we were off on our safari. His car had a Mount Kilimanjaro Safari Club logo, and most of the places we stayed were also owned by them. They weren’t the highest-end places we stayed, but they were very nice.

Let me tell you, while it was a road trip into the African wilderness across mostly bumpy dirt roads, this car was decked out for comfort. Every seat was cushioned, and there was an ice bucket with tons of water. Also, the top opened up to allow us better access to seeing the animals. They even packed up a boxed lunch every day.

It was several hours from Arusha to Tarangire, and while this was the last time we had real roads, I didn’t properly appreciate it until we got onto the dirt paths that would be our home for the next two weeks.

Along the way, we saw lots of monkeys and other animals, as well as the whole of Arusha as we drove past. Then, when we finally arrived at Tarangire National Park, we came across the coolest bird I had ever seen in my life up until that moment, the superb starling. It turns out these little birds are everywhere in Tanzania, but I had never seen a bird so shiny in my life.

I was already impressed, but then we spent the rest of the day trekking around the park, hanging out with all sorts of amazing animals, and falling deeper in love with Tanzania’s wildlife.

One of the coolest things to happen on the first day was when we came upon a huge herd of zebras hanging out by a watering hole and clogging up the road. We didn’t know then coming upon zebra herds would be a theme of the safari, but it was still super cool even though it happened a bunch of times.

After a full day of trekking, we saw a lot of animals (though not that many elephants that the park was known for) and headed back to our campgrounds. However, before we got there we had one more encounter when an elephant family stopped us in the middle of the road to graze.

After being stopped for half an hour (which I’m absolutely not complaining about because it was adorable), we finally arrived at Ormatai Rocks. While these were technically permanent tents, I wouldn’t say we were roughing it.

DAY 2 - Tarangire

Today was elephant day. It started with the amazing view from the restaurant as we ate breakfast. We were told that Tarangire was filled with Tsetse flies, but they were only a problem during the middle of the day. Even then, it was only bad in certain places. We were told not to wear black or dark blue, but it mostly wasn’t an issue. They were equally bad no matter what we wore. Also, they are very slow and dumb. I do highly recommend these Deet wipes, which saved us several times (though they stink).

After breakfast, we headed out from our lodge. Even though we stayed inside the park grounds, which I highly recommend since it allowed us access to the park hours earlier than other people, it still took 30 minutes or so to get into the main park. When we finally got in, we were stopped by a huge pack of baboons and monkeys, right there in the middle of the road.

There were dozens of them and we couldn’t move for a while, so I snapped a bunch of great pics.

After that, we spent the day tracking down a metric ton of elephants all over the park. You literally couldn’t avoid seeing elephants. They were everywhere.

Don’t get me wrong, we saw a million other animals, but the elephants were definitely the highlight of this day. While we saw elephants all through the safari, Tarangire was the best park to see them. Here are some other animals we saw.

If you love giraffes, we saw them everywhere during our safari and they were easily the animal that judged us the most. Look at these adorable, judgy faces.

After another packed day, we returned back to the camp for an amazing dinner and to prepare for the next day.

Before we got to Tanzania, we were told we would be out for 2-3 hours in the morning and then again in the afternoon, so we were expecting to spend a lot of time at the camp. Instead, we ended up going out most days at about 8 am and didn’t get back until right around 5 pm. In talking with other people, they had similar experiences. I don’t know if we got that because of how much we spent, but everyone seemed to be spending about 8 hours a day out in the park.

DAY 3 - Tarangire to Ngorongoro

Travel days really meant all-day travel on this safari. It took us most of the day to travel between Tarangire and the next stop on our journey, the Ngorongoro Crater. The crater is just the most well-known part of a massive conservation area, but we would be spending our time mostly in the crater.

While we saw some cool scenery on our way to the crater, aside from a huge group of baboons hanging out while we checked into the park, it was mostly a very cool car trip without many pictures. By the evening we ended up at our campsite for the next couple of days, Lemala Ngorongoro.

This campsite felt a little more like actual camping than the previous one, but not by much. Still, there was no hot water unless you called a porter to heat it up for you, and they definitely leaned into the “you are the colonizer here” vibe.

Still, a pretty view, though.

DAY 4 - Ngorongoro Crater

This was easily my favorite single place on the whole trip, and where we saw the most diversity per square inch. We even saw a couple of rhinos…at very great distances, though. Ngorongoro had the most beautiful view of any park on the trip.

It was beautiful vistas everywhere, but the scene stealers were once again the big cats. We saw a lion feeding on a kill, napping in the road, and, as we talked about above, one even used our car to (unsuccessfully) hunt a zebra.

One of the things I really wanted to see at Ngorogoro was hippos, and at lunch we got very close with a whole pod of them chilling in the pool. There’s a lot of misinformation about hippos, but they were super chill and even playful when we saw them.

Then, our day ended by driving through another herd of zebras and their wildebeest buddies.

DAY 5 - Ngorongoro crater to Olduvai

I could have stayed in the crater for another week, but alas it was time to move on to the next camp. My mother-in-law is a huge paleontology lover, so we spent the day traveling between Ngorongoro and Olduvai Gorge to check out the site where they found not one but two different protohumans.

Once we got to the gorge, we took a hike down to the excavation site with a guide and got to stand at the site where the skeletons were found. A tour note, make sure you specifically ask about the walk because some people we talked to said they weren’t offered and were bummed they didn’t get to go.

Once we finished at the gorge, we headed to our campsite at Olduvai Camp. One of the cool things about this site is they allow you to walk with a Maasai guide to the campsite. While the rest of the group decided to be dropped off at the entrance to the camp, I wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to take a pretty stroll with donkeys.

It ended up being one of the highlights of the whole tour, and then I got to take another stroll with our guide on a sunset hike to a really cool view.

I adored all the animals we saw during the trip, but I fell in love with the Maasai people through the photography in Life and National Geographic when I was young, so this was a dream come true for me. As a portrait photographer, I was aching to do a photo shoot at a Maasai village, but I didn’t think we would have time.

So, when our guide asked if we wanted to visit a Maasai village the following morning, I was so excited I could barely sleep. No, that’s not true. It was completely dark in our camp, so I slept just fine for the first time in literally years.

DAY 6 - Olduvai to Serengeti

You might have noticed that we’re halfway through this safari before we get to the Serengeti, which is what I always envisioned when I thought of safaris. Turns out there’s a ton more to see than just that one area of Tanzania, but it was finally time to get to the endless plain. First stop, a traditional Maasai village to fulfill a childhood dream!

I had such a great experience learning about the Maasai and their culture I could have just ended the safari there, but we were barely half done and Godfrey had another surprise for us. We were off to see flamingos. Before the trip, I was very excited to go to Lake Manyara National Park, but it was apparently flooded and so our tour guide recommended not going there. I was bummed, but he ended up finding another way for me to get close to flamingos and other birds.

After that, we headed to Serengeti proper. We were pretty tired by then, and running late, but getting delayed checking in to the park worked in our favor because we had two animal encounters on our bucket list; the elusive cheetah and a lion pride with a full mane male lion!

We were very tired by the time we got to our Lemala campsite, but we had to be up early for a balloon ride the next day.

DAY 7 - Serengeti

What better way to see the Serengeti than with a balloon ride at 4:30 in the morning after getting in late the previous day? I kid because it was truly awesome. We were picked up very early by Miracle Experience so we could be in the sky at sunrise, and it was totally worth it, even though the sky was a bit gloomy.

After landing and having breakfast, we headed out around Serengeti to see more awesome animals in another beautiful location.

DAY 8 - Serengeti to Grumeti

Remember all the way at the top of this article when I talked about The Great Migration? Well, we still hadn’t seen it yet. We’ve seen some really cool herds of animals, but we haven’t seen the actual Great Migration, so we set out to find it. This time of year the migration was all the way at the top left of Tanzania and we were smack dab in the middle. Yeah, so it was quite a drive…but it was so worth it.

It was literally wildebeests and other animals as far as the eye could see. This was also the day we stopped by the river and see a wildebeest struggle against a pod of crocodiles. I didn’t love that part, and would not recommend it. Luckily, the animal somehow survived, but it was awful to watch it suffer. I much prefer my animals alive and relaxing. Maybe even munching on some grass or leaves. If you do decide to do the Mara River, I recommend getting as powerful a lens as you can find because this was one time when my glass simply wasn’t good enough.

Eventually, we grew tired and made our way to Grumeti Hills, our final, and most luxurious, campsite. In fact, while everyone else got a tent, my wife and I were somehow upgraded to a full suite with doors and everything. They even had an outdoor shower.

DAY 9 - Grumeti

This was the first day when I woke up legitimately tired, and we decided to rest for most of the day before our only night drive. We did go out in the morning, but the coolest part of the day was seeing a lioness eating with her cubs on our night drive.

One of the best parts of the Nikon D7500 is the 51200 ISO. I’m sure they go higher in newer models, but I used it in the Paris Catacombs too and it allowed me to capture some really nice imagery and a big reason why it makes sense to invest in a nicer camera. The lighting wasn’t the best because of the harsh direct light of the flashlights, but it was absolutely thrilling to see in person. It was the first and only time I was truly terrified a lion would eat me.

DAY 10 - Grumeti to Arusha

Wrapping up the safari meant heading to a very small airport that was little more than a bathroom and grass. However, the safari wasn’t quite done with us yet, because zebras and wildebeests were hanging out on the runway and we had to run them off three times before the plane could land.

Finally, our plane arrived and we said goodbye to our safari.

The final plane ride ended up being like a little safari in and of itself. It stayed low enough to see animals running around most of the time, and we landed about six times to gather additional passengers and catch even more of the beautiful countryside.

This flight was a good encapsulation of a big theme of the trip, which was that you can’t be in a hurry to do anything on safari. When we finally got to Arusha, we needed to catch a plane back to Kilimanjaro for my in-laws to board their flight and for us to catch our ride back to the hotel for one final night, and nothing seemed to happen on time. We were stuck in Arusha for hours longer than we thought, and we didn’t really even have a flight time, just a pink ticket to board eventually.

It ended up working out in the end, and we all made it back, but make sure to just double, triple, and quadruple-check everything. Additionally, leave huge buffers of time just in case delays happen. I can’t guarantee what animals you’ll see, but I can guarantee delays will happen.

My wife’s family is hyper-vigilant about checking every detail, and there were several things that we had to correct on the fly throughout the trip because of miscommunications or mistakes. My best recommendation is to hire a great tour company because you do not want to be stranded in the bush with a substandard company. Even then, leave extra time for everything. Don’t stress and don’t rush. It will probably work out as long as you don’t have anywhere to be in a hurry.

Final thoughts

I honestly can’t recommend a safari enough. Yes, it’s absurdly expensive, but it’s the kind of indescribable once-in-a-lifetime experience that is absolutely worth adding to your bucket list, as long as you a willing to do a lot of planning. My wife’s family literally planned for five years to get this right. Granted, there was a pandemic in the middle of it, but they were changing things and updating us with new information up until we left.

Hopefully, I’ve given you enough guidance that you can at least live vicariously through me even if you can’t go on one yourself. If you can, then I’ve tried to be thorough enough that you can use this article as a guidepost for your own amazing adventure.

Just know, we were told multiple times by our tour guide that we were very lucky. You might not be as lucky as us. Not only did we have almost no rain, but we also saw a lot of animals most people don’t see, like a cheetah, leopards, and even a serval. Somebody even threw a king cobra at our car as we were driving, which was on our impossible list to see.

I’m very glad we went to multiple parks to see the animals in different locations. Additionally, I’m glad we didn’t spend that much time in the Serengeti. It was lovely, but the animals were very spread out and it was the only time I started to feel bored driving. That said, we probably saw the coolest things in the Serengeti, including the Great Migration, a cheetah, male lions, and more.

This was only a small fraction of what we saw, too. I took over 8,600 pictures. These are some of my favorites, but even after cutting liberally, I had over 450 pictures that I absolutely loved. Only a fraction of them made this article.

Hope you enjoyed that little glimpse into my wonderful photo safari to Tanzania.

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