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Places of Africa Safaris

The snowfields of Kibo, Kilimanjaro's summit cone
Kilimanjaro & Northern Circuit · Twelve Days

The summit first, then four days of being driven

Six nights on the Machame route to Uhuru Peak, then Tarangire, the crater and the Serengeti in a vehicle with a roof hatch — in that order, because a safari after a summit is rest and the reverse is not.
12
Days
5,895 m
Summit
3
Parks
Full
Board
Overview
Day by day
Rates
Included
Add-ons
Parks
Best time
Flights
Other costs
Why us
Questions
Your trip
Related
I · Overview

The route, and why this shape

One mountain, three parks. Moshi to Arusha in twelve days, the summit first.
The order is the whole argument. Climb first: six nights on the Machame route, the summit on the morning of day seven, and off the mountain on day eight. Then four nights in the parks in a vehicle that does the walking for you. Done this way round, the safari is the rest your legs are asking for. Done the other way, you start the climb after a week of dust, early starts and lodge dinners, and you go up the mountain tired before you have taken a step.
The climb is the six-night Machame route with the extra night at Karanga, because the five-night version puts summit night on legs that scrambled the Barranco Wall the same morning. Day four takes you to 4,630 metres and back down to 3,960 to sleep, which is the single most useful thing any Kilimanjaro itinerary can do for your body. Nobody can promise you the top; longer routes reach it more often, and this is the shortest one we will sell.
The safari is three parks in four nights, and it is honest about the cost of joining them: day eight is long, and the drive to Tarangire can be split with a night in Moshi. After that it is elephants at the river, the crater at dawn, two nights at Seronera, and a flight home over the plains instead of a day driving across them.
Length
12 days / 11 nights
Country
Tanzania
Start / end
Moshi → Arusha
Tour type
Private climb, Machame route, then private safari
Group size
Private — 1 to 6 guests per vehicle
Meal plan
Full board on the mountain and on safari; dinner and breakfast in Moshi
Best months
June – September
Activity level
Strenuous for seven days, then easy — vehicle-based
Guides
One mountain guide for every two climbers; a licensed safari guide for the safari days
II · The days

Day by day, all twelve

Every day opens. One night in Moshi, six on the mountain, then Tarangire, the rim and two at Seronera. See every lodge and camp we use
Day
01
The snowfields of Kibo, Kilimanjaro's summit cone
Arrival

Moshi, and the kit laid out on the bed

03°21′S 37°20′E
Dinner
The snowfields of Kibo, Kilimanjaro's summit cone
Moshi, and the kit laid out on the bed
03°21′S 37°20′E
You are met at Kilimanjaro International and driven the forty-five kilometres east to Moshi, about an hour, with the mountain somewhere on your left behind the afternoon cloud. The first clear sight of the summit is usually from the hotel garden at six the next morning, and it looks further away than it is.
This is a two-part trip and tonight is where it splits. The lead guide runs the climb briefing after dinner — the route, the daily distances, how the pace is set, what happens if someone has to turn round — and then the kit check, item by item. Anything missing can be hired in Moshi in the morning. Anything you did not know you needed is cheaper to discover here than at 4,600 metres.
Then you pack twice. One duffel for the porters, weighed tonight to the 15-kilogram limit the park enforces at the gate. One bag for the safari — the clothes you will want on day 8 when you come off the mountain — which stays locked at the hotel and is waiting in the vehicle at Mweka Gate. Sleep at 890 metres, the lowest bed of the week.
Meals
Dinner
Travel
Kilimanjaro International to Moshi · ~45 km · about 1 hr
Highlight
Kit check with your lead guide; the safari bag goes into storage
Kit check
Duffel weighed to 15 kg
Safari bag stored
Where you sleep
Aerial view of Weruweru River Lodge
COMFORT

Weruweru River Lodge

★★★★☆
Moshi, garden hotel below the mountain
En-suite rooms, a proper bed and a hot shower — the last one until day 8. Breakfast before the drive to the gate.
Kilimanjaro Coffee Lodge: The lodge
LUXURY

Kilimanjaro Coffee Lodge

★★★★★
Moshi, lodge on the coffee slopes above town
Quieter, higher and cooler, with the summit visible from the terrace on a clear morning. Same briefing, same guide.
Tents in the rocky alpine desert
Machame Gate to Machame Camp
03°06′S 37°16′E
An hour’s drive to Machame Gate and then an hour of registration: the park signs every climber in and weighs every porter’s load, and the crew sorts itself into a line. For two climbers there will be somewhere near ten people on the path ahead of you — guides, a cook and porters — and it is worth learning their names today because you will be relying on them on day seven.
The trail climbs through montane rainforest all day. It is muddy in every month, steep in stretches and dark under the canopy; colobus monkeys are common in the first two hours, and giant heather takes over as the trees thin near the top. The guide walks it slower than you want to. That is deliberate and it does not change all week — pole pole is not a slogan, it is the method.
Machame Camp is at 3,010 metres, just above the treeline. The tents are up when you arrive, tea is ready, and the first oxygen saturation and pulse readings are taken before dinner. They are taken every evening from here on and written down.
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch · Dinner
Travel
Machame Gate 1,800 m → Machame Camp 3,010 m · 11 km · 5–7 hrs
Highlight
1,200 metres of climbing under a closed forest canopy
Forest zone
Porter loads weighed
First health check
Where you sleep
Tents in the rocky alpine desert
COMFORT

Machame Camp

★★★★☆
Machame Camp, 3,010 m — public campsite
Three-season mountain tent shared by two, a foam sleeping mat and a mess tent for meals. Long-drop toilets are the park’s.
Tents in the rocky alpine desert
LUXURY

Machame Camp

★★★★★
Machame Camp, 3,010 m — public campsite
The same camp with a private toilet tent, a thicker sleeping mat and a camp chair with a back.
Trekkers on a mountain path above the clouds
Up the ridge to the Shira plateau
03°03′S 37°17′E
Short in distance, long in effort. The path leaves the heather along a rocky ridge with steps cut into old lava, and the forest drops away behind you until Moshi is a grey smear on the plain. The first hour is the steepest walking on the route before summit night.
The ridge tops out on the Shira plateau, the remains of the oldest of Kilimanjaro’s three volcanic cones, which collapsed long before Kibo grew beside it. It is open moorland at 3,800 metres, giant groundsel and lobelia, and for the first time the summit cone in full view to the east. Camp is reached by early afternoon on purpose: the rest of the day is for sitting still at altitude, which is the cheapest acclimatisation there is.
Nights are cold from here on. Frost on the tents at Shira is normal in any month, and the sleeping bag you bring or hire needs to be rated to minus ten at least. After tea the guide will walk a hundred metres uphill with anyone who wants it — height for the body to notice before it sleeps lower.
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch · Dinner
Travel
Machame Camp 3,010 m → Shira Camp 3,840 m · 5 km · 4–6 hrs
Highlight
Out of the forest and onto the collapsed Shira volcano
Shira plateau
First view of Kibo
Climb high, sleep low
Where you sleep
Tents in the rocky alpine desert
COMFORT

Shira Camp

★★★★☆
Shira Camp, 3,840 m — public campsite
Open, exposed and cold; the plateau catches the wind. Hot water in a bowl for washing each evening and morning.
Tents in the rocky alpine desert
LUXURY

Shira Camp

★★★★★
Shira Camp, 3,840 m — public campsite
Private toilet tent, the better mat, and the mess tent kept warm for the evening briefing.
Tents in the rocky alpine desert
Lava Tower, then down to Barranco
03°06′S 37°20′E
This is the day that makes the climb work. You gain nearly 800 metres to the Lava Tower at 4,630 metres, eat lunch under it, and give almost all of that height back on the descent to Barranco. The net gain for the day is 120 metres. The point is not the camp; it is the hours the body spends above 4,000 metres followed by recovery at a lower bed.
Most people feel the altitude for the first time somewhere below the Tower — a headache, no appetite, a pace slower than the morning’s. That is expected and it is why the day exists. The guide will ask how you feel at the Tower and again at camp, and the honest answer is the useful one. Nobody is judged for a bad afternoon here.
The descent drops through the Barranco valley under the south face of Kibo, among the largest giant groundsels on the mountain, into the camp most climbers rate the best on the route. The Barranco Wall rises straight out of it, and you will look at it over dinner because you climb it first thing tomorrow.
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch · Dinner
Travel
Shira 3,840 m → Lava Tower 4,630 m → Barranco 3,960 m · 10 km · 6–8 hrs
Highlight
The acclimatisation day the whole climb depends on
Lava Tower 4,630 m
Net gain 120 m
Barranco valley
Where you sleep
Tents in the rocky alpine desert
COMFORT

Barranco Camp

★★★★☆
Barranco Camp, 3,960 m — public campsite
Sheltered under the Breach Wall, warmer than Shira. Same tents, same crew, pitched before you arrive.
Tents in the rocky alpine desert
LUXURY

Barranco Camp

★★★★★
Barranco Camp, 3,960 m — public campsite
Private toilet tent, thicker mats, and the pulse-oximeter reading recorded for each climber at the evening check.
Trekkers on a mountain path above the clouds
The Wall, then the short walk to Karanga
03°07′S 37°21′E
The Barranco Wall is the part of the route people worry about and the part they enjoy most. It is a scramble, not a climb — hands are used, ropes are not — up a 257-metre lava face on a path polished by porters carrying twenty kilograms on their heads. The guide stays at your shoulder on the two or three awkward steps and nowhere else, because nowhere else needs it.
The morning is the queue. Every Machame climber on the mountain leaves Barranco within the same hour and the Wall takes them all in single file, so the first ninety minutes are slow. From the top the path rolls across two more valleys, down and up, to Karanga.
Karanga is 35 metres higher than Barranco, and the day is short on purpose. The six-night Machame climb differs from the five-night version exactly here: the shorter route pushes on to Barafu this afternoon and summits tonight on legs that climbed the Wall this morning. Stopping at Karanga buys a rest, a second night near 4,000 metres, and a climber who arrives at Barafu tomorrow with something left.
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch · Dinner
Travel
Barranco 3,960 m → Karanga 3,995 m · 5 km · 4–5 hrs
Highlight
257 metres of scrambling, then a deliberately short afternoon
Scramble, not a climb
Karanga valley
The extra night that matters
Where you sleep
Tents in the rocky alpine desert
COMFORT

Karanga Camp

★★★★☆
Karanga Camp, 3,995 m — public campsite
The last camp with water carried up from the stream below. An afternoon off, and the final full night’s sleep before Barafu.
Tents in the rocky alpine desert
LUXURY

Karanga Camp

★★★★★
Karanga Camp, 3,995 m — public campsite
Private toilet tent and the warmer mat, which earns its weight tonight; Karanga is exposed and the wind gets up.
Trekkers on a mountain path above the clouds
Karanga to Barafu, and an early bed
03°06′S 37°23′E
A short, steep, bare morning up a ridge of scree and rock to Barafu, the Machame route’s summit camp at 4,673 metres. Nothing grows here. Water is carried up by the porters from Karanga, the wind is constant, and the tents are pitched on whatever flat rock the crew can find. You arrive by early afternoon and the rest of the day is for getting ready.
The guide runs the summit briefing after an early dinner: layers laid out in the order you put them on, water bottles filled warm and stowed inside jackets so they do not freeze, headtorch batteries checked, the departure time — usually around eleven at night. On a private climb the pace is yours, which sounds like a gift and is not; the guide will hold you below the speed you think you can manage, and he will be right.
Sleep is difficult at 4,673 metres and you will get three or four hours at most. That is enough. Wake-up is at about half past ten, with tea and biscuits, and you leave camp before midnight.
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch · Dinner
Travel
Karanga 3,995 m → Barafu 4,673 m · 4 km · 3–5 hrs
Highlight
Base camp on the ridge; dinner at five, in your bag by seven
Barafu 4,673 m
Summit briefing
Leave before midnight
Where you sleep
Tents in the rocky alpine desert
COMFORT

Barafu Camp

★★★★☆
Barafu Camp, 4,673 m — public campsite
A few hours in the tent rather than a night. The crew wake you with hot drinks and the tents stay standing for the descent.
Tents in the rocky alpine desert
LUXURY

Barafu Camp

★★★★★
Barafu Camp, 4,673 m — public campsite
Private toilet tent, which at this altitude at this hour is the single upgrade guests say they were most glad of.
Trekkers on a mountain path above the clouds
Uhuru Peak, and the long way down to Mweka
03°05′S 37°21′E
You leave Barafu at around midnight behind the guide’s headtorch. The route zigzags up scree between the Rebmann and Ratzel glaciers for six hours or more, and the pace feels absurdly slow at the bottom and exactly right at the top. Stops are short because stopping means getting cold. The hours between two and five are the hard ones, and everyone who has done this will tell you the same thing: the body is usually fine, and it is the mind that wants to go down.
Stella Point at 5,756 metres is on the crater rim, and it is where the sun usually comes up. From there the path runs a further hour along the rim, past the glaciers, to Uhuru Peak at 5,895 metres — the highest point in Africa. Nobody can promise you the summit. The guide carries oxygen and a pulse oximeter and will turn you round if the readings or the signs say so, and a climber who turns at Stella Point has still stood on the roof of the continent.
Ten minutes on top, then down. The scree that took seven hours to climb takes three to descend, back to Barafu for a rest and a hot meal, then a further four hours through the moorland to Mweka Camp at 3,100 metres, where the air feels thick and the tent feels like a hotel. Tomorrow is the day this whole itinerary is shaped around.
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch · Dinner
Travel
Barafu 4,673 m → Uhuru Peak 5,895 m → Mweka 3,100 m · 5 km up, 12 km down · 12–16 hrs
Highlight
1,222 metres up in the dark, then 2,800 metres down by daylight
Stella Point 5,756 m
Uhuru Peak 5,895 m
Down to Mweka 3,100 m
Where you sleep
Tents in the rocky alpine desert
COMFORT

Mweka Camp

★★★★☆
Mweka Camp, 3,100 m — public campsite
Back among the heather and the first trees. The crew have carried camp down ahead of you; dinner is early and long.
Tents in the rocky alpine desert
LUXURY

Mweka Camp

★★★★★
Mweka Camp, 3,100 m — public campsite
Last night on the mountain, private toilet tent, and the evening the crew sing — which is tradition, not a show.
An elephant beside a baobab in Tarangire
Mweka Gate, then west to Tarangire
03°50′S 36°00′E
Breakfast at Mweka, then the tipping ceremony, which happens at camp rather than the gate because the porters leave straight from the gate for their next climb. Then 10 kilometres of forest trail down to Mweka Gate, muddy and hard on knees that have already come down 2,800 metres; poles matter more today than on any other day. At the gate you sign out and the certificates are issued — green for Stella Point, gold for Uhuru Peak.
This is a long day and we will not pretend otherwise. The vehicle meets you at the gate with your safari bag, drives you the hour to Moshi for a shower and lunch, and then west past Arusha and down onto the Rift floor to Tarangire — roughly 200 kilometres, most of an afternoon on tarmac. You arrive around dusk. The trade is that you wake up tomorrow already inside elephant country, with the whole of the safari ahead and nothing left to climb.
If you would rather not do the drive on summit-day legs, the add-on night in Moshi splits it: a full sleep in a bed, and Tarangire the next morning with the afternoon drive intact. It costs a day and it is the version we recommend to anyone over fifty or anyone who has never slept in a tent for six nights. We will tell you plainly which shape suits your dates.
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch · Dinner
Travel
Mweka 3,100 m → Mweka Gate 1,640 m · 10 km · 3–4 hrs, then Moshi to Tarangire · about 200 km · 3½–4 hours
Highlight
Certificates at the gate, a shower in Moshi, elephants by dusk
Summit certificate
The long drive west
Moshi night as add-on
Where you sleep
Mbali Mbali Tarangire River Camp: Luxury Guest Tent: thatched tent on a raised deck under a baobab with outdoor bathtub
COMFORT

Mbali Mbali Tarangire River Camp

★★★★☆
Tarangire, tented camp near the gate
En-suite tents under the acacia, a real bed and a hot shower after six nights on a mat. Full board, and a late start tomorrow if you want one.
Lemala Mpingo Ridge Lodge: Suite deck with outdoor bathtub and seating overlooking Tarangire at sunset
LUXURY

Lemala Mpingo Ridge Lodge

★★★★★
Tarangire, lodge on the escarpment
Rooms facing down the river valley and a deck where the elephants cross below you. The evening you will remember most clearly for how still it is.
Wildebeest in the Ngorongoro Crater
The river circuit, then up to the crater rim
03°10′S 35°35′E
A full morning in Tarangire, and the reason the park is here. In the dry months from June to October the Tarangire river runs when nothing else does, and the largest elephant population in northern Tanzania walks to it. You will not see one elephant. You will see a family of forty crossing the track at a walk, and the guide will turn the engine off so you can hear them. The baobabs along the river carry the scars where the herds have stripped the bark in bad years.
After seven days on foot the vehicle is the point. You sit, the guide drives, the roof hatch is open, and your legs — which are going to ache for three more days whatever you do — are not asked to do anything. This is why the climb comes first.
Lunch in the park, then north and west up the Rift wall past Lake Manyara to Karatu and on to the Ngorongoro rim, at about 2,300 metres. After a week at 4,000 the altitude will not trouble you, but the cold after dark still will. The first sight of the crater from the top is the one moment on this route that outperforms the photographs: a caldera nineteen kilometres across with its own weather, and you sleep on the edge of it.
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch · Dinner
Travel
Tarangire river circuit, then to the Ngorongoro rim · about 150 km · about 3 hours
Highlight
Elephant herds at the river, and the first sight of the caldera
Elephant herds
Baobab country
Rim at 2,300 m — layer up
Where you sleep
Pakulala Safari Camp: Tent interior with two queen beds, patterned throws and bedside lanterns
COMFORT

Pakulala Safari Camp

★★★★☆
Ngorongoro Conservation Area, crater rim
On the rim, which means a short descent at first light rather than an hour’s drive before the gate opens. Bring a fleece.
Entamanu Ngorongoro: Main lounge: guests by the fireplace
LUXURY

Entamanu Ngorongoro

★★★★★
Ngorongoro Conservation Area, crater rim
Rim-facing rooms with the crater floor below the window, and fires lit in the evening.
A black rhino with buffalo on green grass
The crater at dawn, then west to Seronera
02°26′S 34°50′E
You descend at first light, because being on the rim puts you at the descent road an hour ahead of the vehicles that slept in Karatu, and on the crater floor an hour is the difference between an empty track and a queue. The road drops six hundred metres in a few kilometres and you are on the floor before the light has properly arrived.
What the crater has that nowhere else on this route does is black rhino — a few dozen animals, and the most reliable place in Tanzania to see one. Add the highest lion density on the continent, the Lerai fever-tree forest and a soda lake with flamingo, inside a closed bowl of about 260 square kilometres. It is not wild the way the Serengeti is wild. It is a spectacle, and worth being one. Vehicles are limited to six hours on the floor, and you use the morning half of them.
Up the ascent road by late morning and west across the Conservation Area, past Olduvai Gorge if there is time, through Naabi Hill gate and onto the Serengeti proper. For forty minutes there is nothing on the horizon but grass and the occasional kopje. You reach the Seronera valley in the late afternoon with time for a short drive before dark; it has permanent water and the highest year-round predator density in the ecosystem.
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch · Dinner
Travel
600 m descent · crater floor · then rim to Seronera · about 150 km · 3–4 hours
Highlight
Black rhino on the floor, then through Naabi Hill gate onto the plains
Dawn descent
Black rhino
Naabi Hill gate
Where you sleep
Kubu Kubu Tented Lodge: Tent interior with mosquito-net canopy bed under a thatched roof
COMFORT

Kubu Kubu Tented Lodge

★★★★☆
Central Serengeti, Seronera valley
Tented, en-suite, inside the park, so the morning drive starts at the tent flap rather than at a gate.
Lemala Ewanjan Tented Camp: Camp exterior: guest tents with verandas under acacia trees, lantern in foreground
LUXURY

Lemala Ewanjan Tented Camp

★★★★★
Central Serengeti, Seronera valley
Fewer tents, further from the main track, with the late drives and field breakfasts a private vehicle makes possible.
A leopard in a tree
The Seronera valley, all day
02°26′S 34°49′E
A full day with no transfer — the single most valuable thing on any safari itinerary and the first thing cut when a trip is compressed. You are out at six with breakfast in the vehicle, and for the first time in eleven days there is no camp to reach and no gate to make.
The valley follows the Seronera river, and in the dry season the river is the reason everything is here. Lion are close to certain. Leopard are likely if your guide knows the individual sausage trees and figs, which is a real skill and the main thing separating a good guide from an adequate one. Cheetah hunt the open ground south and east of the river before the heat. Nothing on this list is promised. In June the tail of the migration is often still passing through the western corridor; by August the herds are far to the north and this valley is about its residents.
A balloon flight leaves from near here at first light and can be added — it is a serious expense, and after a week of walking up a volcano it is a fair way to look at one from above. If you are not flying, push out towards the Moru kopjes, where there is a resident black rhino population and rock paintings that predate the park by centuries. Back to camp for the last dinner of the trip.
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch · Dinner
Travel
Full day in the park · no transfer
Highlight
Leopard in the riverine fig, lion on the kopjes, and nowhere to be
Leopard country
Kopje prides
Optional balloon
Where you sleep
Kubu Kubu Tented Lodge: Restaurant under a high thatched roof with set tables
COMFORT

Kubu Kubu Tented Lodge

★★★★☆
Central Serengeti, Seronera valley
Second night. The value of two nights here is the early morning: you are already inside the park when the cats are moving.
Lemala Ewanjan Tented Camp: Guest tent with furnished wooden deck lit up at night under a starry sky
LUXURY

Lemala Ewanjan Tented Camp

★★★★★
Central Serengeti, Seronera valley
Second night, with a dawn start and breakfast in the field if you want it, or a lie-in if your legs vote otherwise.
Two Maasai men beside a light aircraft on a bush airstrip
Seronera airstrip, and home by air
02°27′S 34°49′E
A short game drive on the way to Seronera airstrip, because the hour after sunrise is worth having and the airstrip is inside the park. Light aircraft fly from Seronera to Arusha most mornings; the flight takes about an hour and crosses the plains you drove on day 10, then the crater highlands, and puts you down in Arusha before lunch.
Flying out is the right end for this trip and it is why the itinerary finishes in Arusha rather than back in Moshi. Driving Seronera to Arusha is a full day on the road; on day 12 of a trip that began with a mountain, that is a day you do not need. The luggage limit on the light aircraft is 15 kilograms per person in soft bags, which is exactly the duffel you packed for the porters.
From Arusha you are driven to Kilimanjaro International for an evening flight, or connect from Arusha to Zanzibar if the coast is next. Day rooms in Arusha can be arranged if your flight is late. You go home having stood on the highest point in Africa and then been driven, deliberately, for four days.
Meals
Breakfast
Travel
Seronera airstrip to Arusha · about 1 hr flying · scheduled departures late morning and early afternoon
Highlight
One last drive to the airstrip, then over the plains instead of across them
Fly, not drive
Arusha before lunch
Onward to Zanzibar possible
Where you sleep
Departure day — no overnight
III · Rates

What it costs, by group size

Priced per person for the whole twelve days. Choose a tier to see the table — Standard or Premium covers the mountain kit and the safari lodges together.
Standard rates by group size, per person and group total
Group sizeRoomsPer personGroup total
1 guest1 tent / room$8,700$8,700
2 guests1 tent / room$6,550$13,100
3 guests2 tents / rooms$6,450$19,350
4 guests2 tents / rooms$5,940$23,760
5 guests3 tents / rooms$6,000$30,000
6+ guests3 tents / rooms$5,740$34,440
Single supplement
$820
Added when a guest does not share a tent on the mountain or a room on safari
Sleeping bag hire
USD 45 per climb
Minus-ten-rated bag, hired in Moshi for the climb
Peak season uplift
Included in the rates above
July – September, full-moon summit dates, and the festive weeks
All figures in US dollars, per person sharing unless stated. Valid for travel until 30 June 2027. Park fees, guiding, vehicle, accommodation and full board are included — see what is and is not covered below.
IV · Included

What is in the price, and what is not

Stated in full, both ways. Park, camping and rescue fees are in; crew and guide tips are not.

What is included

  • Kilimanjaro National Park entry, camping and rescue fees for all seven days on the mountain
  • One night in Moshi before the climb, bed and breakfast
  • Transfers Moshi ↔ Machame Gate, and the vehicle at Mweka Gate on day 8
  • A lead mountain guide and assistant guides — one guide for every two climbers
  • Porters, a cook, and all camp crew; all meals on the mountain with boiled drinking water
  • Sleeping tents, mess tent, sleeping mats, and camp furniture as listed by tier
  • Pulse oximeter checks every evening, and emergency oxygen carried by the guides
  • All game drives in a private 4×4 with a roof hatch, with a professional English-speaking safari guide
  • Four nights on safari, full board, and all park and Ngorongoro Conservation Area fees including the crater service fee
  • The light-aircraft flight Seronera to Arusha on day 12 — fare included, 15 kg per person in soft bags
  • Airport transfers, Kilimanjaro International, both ways
  • Emergency evacuation plan with the Kilimanjaro National Park rescue team and, when needed, helicopter evacuation for insured climbers

What is not

  • International flights to and from Tanzania
  • Tanzania visa — USD 50, or USD 100 for United States passports
  • Travel insurance covering trekking to 6,000 metres, which every climber must hold
  • Tips for the mountain crew, your safari guide and lodge staff — see Other costs
  • Sleeping bag, trekking poles and clothing hire
  • Lunch and dinner in Moshi on day 1, and lunch in Arusha on day 12
  • Balloon flight over the Serengeti
  • Drinks at the lodges, and personal spending
V · Add-ons

Worth adding, if you have the days

Priced separately and arranged on request. The Moshi rest night is the one to read first.
Two guests relaxing by a lodge plunge pool
Between days 8 and 9

A rest night in Moshi after the climb

Splits the longest day of the trip. You come off the mountain, shower, sleep in a bed, and drive to Tarangire the next morning with the afternoon game drive intact. Adds a day; we recommend it to most climbers.
USD 170 per person, for 2 guests
Two guests relaxing by a lodge plunge pool
Day 1

Kit hire in Moshi

A minus-ten sleeping bag, poles, a down jacket, gaiters — anything you would rather not carry across the world for one week. Hired the evening you arrive so the kit check happens with the real kit.
USD 130 per person
A balloon above the migrating herds
Seronera · day 11 · at dawn

Balloon over the Serengeti

An hour over the plains at first light, landing to a breakfast in the grass. Weather-dependent, minimum age <span class=”it-todo”>7</span>, and booked well ahead — Serengeti balloons sell out months before the dry season.
USD 750 per person
Dhows moored off a white-sand beach on Zanzibar
After day 12 · 3–5 nights

Zanzibar, afterwards

Flights from Arusha take under two hours. After a mountain and four parks, three or four nights on the east coast is the shape most people want, and it is the one we would build.
From USD 1,340 per person, 3 nights
VI · The mountain and the parks

Where this itinerary takes you

One park you walk up, three you are driven through.
The snowfields of Kibo, Kilimanjaro's summit cone

Kilimanjaro National Park

1,688 square kilometres around a free-standing volcano that rises from farmland at 1,000 metres to 5,895 at Uhuru Peak. Five climate zones stack up the mountain — cultivated slopes, rainforest, heath and moorland, alpine desert, the summit ice — and the Machame route walks through every one of them. Six nights, camping only.
An elephant beside a baobab in Tarangire

Tarangire National Park

2,850 square kilometres along a single permanent river. In the dry months the river concentrates the largest elephant population in northern Tanzania. One night and a morning — enough for the river circuit, and the first time in a week you sit down while the scenery moves.
Wildebeest in the Ngorongoro Crater

Ngorongoro Crater

The largest intact volcanic caldera in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Around 25,000 large animals on 260 square kilometres of crater floor, including the most reliable black rhino in Tanzania. A night on the rim, and the floor at first light.
Dawn over the Serengeti

Serengeti National Park

14,750 square kilometres of plain, kopje and riverine forest. The Seronera valley in the centre holds water year-round and carries resident lion, leopard and cheetah whether or not the migration is anywhere near. Two nights, one full day with no transfer, and the airstrip home.
The question everyone asks about this route

Why the climb comes first

7 → 4
Days on foot, then nights in a vehicle
People ask whether they can do the safari first and finish on the summit, and the answer is that you can, and you should not. A safari week is not rest: five-thirty starts, long days in a vehicle on rough roads, dust, lodge dinners that run late, and four nights between 1,200 and 2,300 metres that do nothing useful for acclimatisation. You arrive at Machame Gate a week more tired than you left home, and summit night does not forgive that.
Done this way round, the mountain gets you fresh and the safari gets you tired, which is the right way for both. Four days of being driven is what legs that have just descended 4,000 metres want. The trade-off is day eight, which is long, and the fact that you spend the first week of your holiday unable to shower. Neither reverses the argument. If you want the summit certificate to be the last photograph of the trip, we will build it that way and tell you what it costs you.
VII · Season

The best time to travel

June to September is the window where both halves work at once.
June to September is the window this itinerary is built for, because it is the one time both halves work at once. On the mountain it is the long dry season: cold — minus ten to minus twenty on summit night is normal — but reliably dry, with the summit clear most mornings. In the parks the same dry season pulls the game to the Tarangire and Seronera rivers and keeps the grass low enough to see cats at a distance.
Within the window, June and September are quieter on both the Wall and the crater floor than July and August. Full-moon summit dates are the most sought after in every month, because the scree is lit from Barafu to the rim; book them early.
January and February are the warmest and clearest months on the mountain and a good second window for the climb. The parks are greener and the elephants more spread out, and the southern Serengeti is calving, which is a different trip from the one on this page. Ask us and we will re-shape the safari half towards Ndutu.
March to May is the long rains. The forest days are a river of mud, the summit cone is often in fresh snow, and the Tarangire and Serengeti tracks are at their worst. We will tell you plainly that this is not the time for this route. November’s short rains are workable on the mountain but a compromise in the parks; October and December sit either side and are better bets.
VIII · Flights

Getting there and back

Fly into Kilimanjaro International. Fly home from Seronera to Arusha rather than driving it.
Fly into Kilimanjaro International (JRO). It is the airport the mountain is named for, forty-five kilometres from Moshi, and any other airport adds a day. Most European routings connect through Doha, Istanbul, Amsterdam or Addis Ababa and land in the evening.
Arrive the day before the climb briefing if you can. A delayed bag with your boots in it is far easier to chase with a day in hand than with none, and an extra night at 890 metres does you no harm.
Coming home, day 12 flies you from Seronera airstrip to Arusha in about an hour, landing before lunch. An evening flight out of JRO the same day is the normal shape; Arusha to JRO is about an hour by road. The light aircraft carries 15 kilograms per person in soft bags — the same duffel that went up the mountain.
Tanzania requires a visa for most passports — USD 50, or USD 100 for United States citizens, valid up to 90 days. Apply online in advance rather than at the airport after an overnight flight.
IX · Other costs

What else you will spend

Visa, insurance, two kinds of tipping and kit hire — set out so there is no surprise at the gate.
Tanzania issues a tourist visa online (eVisa) or on arrival at Kilimanjaro International. Applying in advance is faster and avoids the queue at immigration after an evening arrival.
A yellow fever certificate is required only if you are arriving from a country where yellow fever is endemic. Coming directly from Europe or North America, it is not.
  • USD 50 for most nationalities
  • USD 100 for United States citizens, multiple entry
  • Valid up to 90 days
  • Passport must have six months' validity and two blank pages
Every climber must hold insurance that explicitly covers trekking to 6,000 metres. Many standard policies stop at 3,000 or 4,000, and the difference only becomes visible when a claim is refused. Read the altitude clause, not the summary.
The same policy needs to cover the safari week and the light aircraft flight. Medical evacuation is the part that matters: rescue off the mountain begins with the park’s team, which the fees cover, and the nearest hospital to Seronera is a flight away, not a drive.
Kilimanjaro tips are given per crew member for the whole climb, not per guest per day, and they are a real part of the crew’s income. They are pooled and handed to the lead guide at Mweka Camp on the morning of day 8, in front of the whole crew, who reads out what each person receives. Bring this in US dollar cash before you leave Moshi.
On safari the usual shape is a tip for your guide at the end and a shared box at each lodge for the staff you do not see. Tipping is customary and genuinely optional; the figures below are what guests commonly give.
  • Lead mountain guide: USD 20 – 25 per day
  • Assistant guide, each: USD 15 – 20 per day
  • Cook: USD 12 – 15 per day
  • Porter, each: USD 8 – 10 per day each
  • Safari guide, per day: USD 20 – 30 per day, per group
  • Lodge staff, shared box: USD 10 – 15 per guest per day
Nothing is sold above Machame Gate, so the only spending on the mountain is nothing. In Moshi, hire what you do not own rather than buying it. On safari, drinking water in the vehicle is included and everything at the lodge bar goes on your room.
  • Sleeping bag, minus-ten rated: USD 45 per climb
  • Trekking poles, pair: USD 15 per climb
  • Soft drinks at the lodges: USD 3 – 5
  • Local beer: USD 4 – 6
  • Wine and spirits: USD 7 – 20
Meals in Moshi on the first evening, a beer at Mweka Gate, laundry — which every lodge on the safari half will do for you, and which you will want on day 8 — and souvenirs. Cash in small US dollar notes is more useful than a card; the crew are paid and tipped in cash, and some camps have no connection at all.
Notes dated before 2009 are refused across Tanzania. Bring newer ones.
X · Why us

Why book this with us

01

One company for both halves

The mountain crew and the safari guide are ours, and they talk to each other. If you come off the mountain late, the vehicle at Mweka Gate knows, and Tarangire moves. No hand-off between two operators who have never met.
02

The right way round, and we will say why

We sell this climb-first and we will tell you plainly why the reverse is a worse trip. If you still want the summit last, we will build it and tell you what it costs you.
03

Six nights, not five

We do not sell the five-night Machame climb. The Karanga night costs a day and it is the day that sends the most people to the top. Every version of this itinerary carries it.
04

We will turn you round

The guides carry oxygen and check you every evening, and if the readings say down, you go down — and the safari still happens. A climb that ends at Stella Point on a guide’s call is a good outcome. We say so before you book, not after.
XI · Questions

Frequently asked

What climbers ask before booking the two halves together.
The rate depends on your group size and which tier you choose — Standard or Premium covers both the kit on the mountain and the lodges on safari — and it moves with the season. The table above sets out the per-person price for every group size from one to six. Our rates for this itinerary are set out in the table above — ask us and we will quote for your exact dates rather than give you a range.
You can, and we advise against it. A safari week is early starts, long days on rough roads and four nights at altitudes that do nothing for acclimatisation, so you reach Machame Gate tired. Done climb-first, the safari is the rest your legs want. If the summit must be the last photograph, tell us and we will build it that way and say plainly what it costs you.
Long. Three to four hours down to Mweka Gate, an hour to Moshi for a shower and lunch, then roughly 200 kilometres west to Tarangire, arriving around dusk — the exact drive time is about 3½ to 4 hours. If that sounds like too much after summit night, the add-on night in Moshi splits it, adds a day, and is what we recommend to most climbers.
Fit enough to walk five to seven hours a day for six days with a daypack, and then twelve to sixteen hours on summit day. That is hill-walking fitness, not athletic fitness. Altitude, not strength, is what stops people, and fitness does not protect against it — see how altitude works on Kilimanjaro. The safari half asks nothing of you at all.
We do not publish one, and we would be wary of any operator who quotes a precise figure. What is known is that longer routes summit more often than shorter ones, and this route carries the extra night at Karanga for that reason. Nobody can promise you the top.
An assistant guide takes you down and you rest in Moshi until the safari begins. Descending is the treatment for altitude sickness, and people who turn round at Lava Tower or Barafu usually feel well within hours. The safari half of the trip goes ahead as booked either way; the vehicle simply collects you a day or two earlier.
Probably not in the months this trip is built for. From July to September the herds are on the Mara River in the far north, a day beyond Seronera and not on this route. In June the tail is often still moving through the western corridor. The Seronera valley has resident lion, leopard and cheetah in every month, which is what the two Serengeti nights are built around — see where the herds are, month by month.
On the mountain, Standard is a three-season two-person tent with a foam mat and the park’s long-drop toilets; Premium adds a private toilet tent, a thicker mat and a chair with a back. On safari, Standard is en-suite tented camps and lodges on full board, and Premium is smaller camps, further from the main tracks, with the late drives and field breakfasts that go with them. All lodges are named on this page.
The park sets a minimum of 10 years for climbing above 3,000 metres, and we apply 12. Serengeti game drives have a minimum age of 5 and we apply 6; the balloon is 7. A twelve-day trip with a summit in it is a serious undertaking for a teenager, and we will say so if we think it is the wrong fit.
XII · Your trip

Request your personalised safari proposal

Tell us how you like to travel and we will put together a personalised proposal for this route — dates, camps and a firm price per person. No payment is required at this stage.

WhatsApp+255 785 558 736Emailinfo@placesofafricasafaris.comReply timeWithin one working day

No payment is required at this stage. We reply by email and WhatsApp within one working day.

XIII · Related

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Four more that share this one’s parks, or its kind of travel.
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The summit first, then four days of being driven

12
Days
5,895 m
Summit
3
Parks
Full
Board
Starts
Moshi, Tanzania
Ends
Arusha, Tanzania
Departures
Daily — a private safari on the dates you choose
Availability
Daily starts, all year
From
from$5,740/pp
Per person, sharing
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