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Places of Africa Safaris

Wildebeest crossing the Mara River
Southern Serengeti · Seven Days

Calving season on the Ndutu plains

Three nights on the short-grass plains in the weeks when half a million wildebeest calves are born, with every predator in the ecosystem waiting — then the crater on the way home.
7
Days
6
Nights
Jan – Mar
Season
Full
Board
I · Overview

The route, and why this shape

One reason to travel, and the days that serve it. Three nights on the calving ground.
This is a trip with one reason. Between late December and March the wildebeest migration is on the short-grass plains of the southern Serengeti ecosystem, and for about three weeks — usually late January into February — the cows drop something like half a million calves. Ndutu, in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area just inside the boundary with the national park, is the centre of it.
So the week is built around Ndutu and gives it three nights, which is one more than most itineraries and the one that matters. The herds move with the rain, sometimes forty kilometres overnight, and a single full day can be spent catching up with them. Two full days means one of them can go wherever they went. Off-road driving is permitted in this part of the conservation area, which it is not inside the Serengeti park, and that changes what a morning with a cheetah looks like.
The trade is everything else. No Tarangire, no Seronera, no Manyara beyond a viewpoint. A night on the Karatu escarpment breaks the drive out, a night on the Ngorongoro rim puts you on the crater floor at six on the last morning, and that is the whole route. If you want four parks, this is not the week. If you want the calving, it is.
Length
7 days / 6 nights
Country
Tanzania
Start / end
Arusha → Arusha
Tour type
Private safari
Group size
Private — 1 to 6 guests per vehicle
Meal plan
Full board
Best months
Late December – March; peak late January – February
Activity level
Easy — vehicle-based, early starts
Vehicle
Toyota Land Cruiser 4×4 with a pop-up roof, a window seat for every guest, charging points and a cool box
II · The days

Day by day, all seven

Every day opens. A night in Arusha, one at Karatu, three at Ndutu, one on the crater rim. See every lodge and camp we use
Day
01
Acacia trees silhouetted against the setting sun
Arrival

Kilimanjaro International, and a night in Arusha

03°22′S 36°41′E
Dinner
Acacia trees silhouetted against the setting sun
Kilimanjaro International, and a night in Arusha
03°22′S 36°41′E
You land at Kilimanjaro International, most likely in the afternoon or evening, and are driven fifty kilometres west to Arusha through coffee shambas under Mount Meru. Your guide meets you at the door and will do most of the talking on the way in, because after a long-haul flight you will not want to.
Nothing is scheduled tonight, on purpose. Arusha sits at 1,400 metres and the first evening always feels longer than it is, particularly if you have come through two connections to get here. Eat early, repack into a soft bag — hard cases do not fit under the bench seats of a safari vehicle — and sleep. The week ahead has three long mornings in a row at Ndutu and you want to arrive there with something in reserve.
One piece of admin worth doing tonight rather than on the road: agree the tipping arrangement with your guide and change money for it. It is the only awkward conversation of the trip and it is better had before the first game drive than after the last. Ask him, too, which seat in the vehicle he would take; you will be in it for most of the next six days.
Meals
Dinner
Travel
JRO to Arusha · 50 km · about 1 hour
Highlight
Nothing scheduled — the trip starts rested
Meet at Kilimanjaro International
Arusha, 1,400 m
No game drive today
Where you sleep
Kahawa House: Two-storey main building with terrace and swimming pool in the gardens
COMFORT

Kahawa House

★★★★☆
Arusha, garden lodge on the edge of town
Quiet, en-suite, ten minutes from the road west. Bed and breakfast; dinner is included tonight.
Legendary Lodge: Bedroom with wooden four-poster bed and white sheer curtains, hardwood floors
LUXURY

Legendary Lodge

★★★★★
Arusha, coffee-estate lodge outside town
Larger rooms set among the coffee, and a proper dinner after twenty hours of aircraft food.
Flamingos in the shallows below an acacia by a lake
West to Karatu, up the Rift wall
03°20′S 35°42′E
This day exists to break the drive. Arusha to Ndutu in one go is close to three hundred kilometres, the second half on gravel, and you would reach the plains in the dark having seen none of them. So the road west is taken in two halves, and the first half is the easy one: tarmac all the way, through Maasai grazing country and across the floor of the Rift.
The road climbs the escarpment above Lake Manyara in a series of bends, and the viewpoint at the top is the one everybody stops for — the soda lake laid out below, the groundwater forest a dark strip along its western shore. You do not go into the park today; that is the trade for reaching Karatu with the afternoon intact. In these months the lake is usually full and the flamingo, when they are there, read from the top as a pink line rather than as birds.
Karatu is highland farming country at about 1,500 metres, red soil and coffee, and noticeably cooler than Arusha. The afternoon is deliberately light. A coffee-farm walk can be arranged if you want one, but the honest advice is to do very little, because tomorrow starts early and the three days after it start earlier.
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch · Dinner
Travel
Arusha to Karatu · about 140 km, 2½–3 hours · about 140 km on tarmac
Highlight
The escarpment viewpoint over Lake Manyara
Rift Valley escarpment
Manyara viewpoint
Karatu highlands
Where you sleep
Tloma Lodge: Swimming pool with umbrellas and loungers, lodge buildings and coffee farm behind
COMFORT

Tloma Lodge

★★★★☆
Karatu, coffee-farm lodge
Among the coffee on the escarpment. Cool at night — bring a layer out of your bag before dinner.
Gibb's Farm: Farm cottage bedroom with twin beds, stone wall, eucalyptus floors and hand-crafted furniture
LUXURY

Gibb's Farm

★★★★★
Karatu, highlands estate
Cottages in the gardens of a working farm, fires lit in the evening, and the best food of the week.
Wildebeest in the Ngorongoro Crater
Over the rim and down onto the short-grass plains
02°59′S 34°58′E
Into the Ngorongoro Conservation Area at Lodoare gate, up through montane forest to the crater rim at about 2,300 metres, and a stop at the viewpoint — you will be down on the floor on day 7, so today you only look. Then the road drops off the western side of the highlands and the trees stop. What follows is the short-grass plain: flat, treeless, volcanic, and in January and February carrying more large animals per square kilometre than anywhere else on earth.
Olduvai Gorge is a short detour off this road and worth the hour. The beds cut into the gorge wall hold nearly two million years of hominin occupation, and the small museum on the rim puts the Laetoli footprints in front of you rather than in a textbook. It is also the last place with a proper toilet before camp.
The last stretch to Ndutu is where the trip properly starts. If the rains have come the herds are spread across the plains either side of the track, and the vehicle will stop long before camp. You sleep in the acacia woodland around Lake Ndutu, just inside the conservation area boundary with the Serengeti, for the next three nights.
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch · Dinner
Travel
Karatu over the rim to Ndutu · about 120 km, 3–4 hours · gravel from Lodoare gate
Highlight
The first herds, seen from the road before camp
Crater rim viewpoint
Olduvai Gorge
Ndutu, three nights
Where you sleep
Masek Tented Lodge: Swimming pool at dusk with loungers, acacias and main building beyond
COMFORT

Masek Tented Lodge

★★★★☆
Ndutu, acacia woodland by the lake
Seasonal tented camp, en-suite, full board. Pitched for these months and taken down when the herds leave.
Serian's Serengeti South: Main mess tent under acacia trees in camp
LUXURY

Serian's Serengeti South

★★★★★
Ndutu, mobile camp on the plains edge
A mobile camp that moves with the migration, so it is placed where the herds were last week rather than where a lodge was built twenty years ago.
A wildebeest calf on the short-grass plains
A full day on the calving ground
02°59′S 34°58′E
Out before sunrise with breakfast in a box, because the births happen in the first hours of daylight and so does the hunting. In the peak weeks of late January and February something like eight thousand calves are dropped a day. A wildebeest calf is on its feet within minutes and can keep up with the herd within a day, which is the whole strategy: so many born so fast that the predators cannot eat them all.
The Ndutu part of the conservation area is one of the few places in the ecosystem where driving off the track is permitted. That is the practical advantage of basing here rather than inside the Serengeti National Park a few kilometres north, where you stay on the road. Your guide can put the vehicle where the light is, and stay with a cheetah as it moves.
What you will see is the arithmetic. Lion prides along the lake woodland, cheetah on the open ground, spotted hyena in clans of twenty, and jackal everywhere. What cannot be promised is a kill in front of you, or any particular animal on any particular day. What can be said is that the density here in these weeks is the highest of the year anywhere in the ecosystem.
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch · Dinner
Travel
Full day on the plains · no transfer
Highlight
Calves born in front of the vehicle
Off-road driving permitted
Cheetah country
Dawn start
Where you sleep
Masek Tented Lodge: Suite tent interior: canopy bed, sofa, bathroom doorway
COMFORT

Masek Tented Lodge

★★★★☆
Ndutu, acacia woodland by the lake
Second night. No packing, no transfer — the value of three nights here is the morning you are already on the plains.
Serian's Serengeti South: Guest tent interior looking through to the bed and bathroom
LUXURY

Serian's Serengeti South

★★★★★
Ndutu, mobile camp on the plains edge
Second night, with breakfast taken in the field so the dawn hours are not spent at a table.
Elephants and wildebeest among the trees
Following the herds wherever the rain put them
02°59′S 34°58′E
The third night at Ndutu is the one most itineraries cut, and it is the reason this one works. The herds move with the rain. A storm forty kilometres away will pull a hundred thousand animals towards it overnight, and a single day here can mean finding them on the wrong side of the plain and spending the morning catching up. With two full days, one of them can be given to going where they went.
Depending on where that is, the morning runs south-west towards Kusini, or east across the plains towards the Gol kopjes and Hidden Valley, or no further than the two lakes. Lake Ndutu and Lake Masek are alkaline and the woodland between them is where the resident lion sleep out the heat, so even a quiet day on the plains has somewhere to come back to.
This is also the day to watch the ground rather than the herds. The grass is short because the soil is volcanic ash from the highlands, shallow over a hardpan that trees cannot root through, and rich in the calcium and phosphorus that a lactating wildebeest needs. That is why half a million animals give birth here rather than anywhere else in the ecosystem. It is geology first and spectacle second.
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch · Dinner
Travel
Full day on the plains · no transfer
Highlight
The Kusini and Hidden Valley side, if the herds have moved
Full day, no transfer
Lake Ndutu and Lake Masek
Herds follow the rain
Where you sleep
Masek Tented Lodge: Exterior of a canvas guest tent on a raised deck under acacia trees
COMFORT

Masek Tented Lodge

★★★★☆
Ndutu, acacia woodland by the lake
Third night. By now your guide knows which side of the plain the herds are on and where the cheetah were yesterday.
Serian's Serengeti South: Guests relaxing on sofas in the lounge tent
LUXURY

Serian's Serengeti South

★★★★★
Ndutu, mobile camp on the plains edge
Third night, same tent. The last evening is usually spent at the lake shore watching the herds come down to drink.
Wildebeest in the Ngorongoro Crater
Back east, up to the crater rim
03°14′S 35°29′E
A morning game drive on the way out, which is not a consolation prize: the plains east of Ndutu towards the Naabi road often hold as many animals as the lake side, and you are crossing them with the light behind you. If the herds have shifted east overnight this can be the best drive of the week. Lunch is on the road.
Then the climb. The road rises off the plain into the highlands, past the Olduvai turning, and up to the Ngorongoro rim at about 2,300 metres. The temperature drops with every hundred metres and the rim after dark is properly cold — people who packed for the plains are caught out every week. The first sight of the crater from the top consistently outperforms the photographs: a caldera nineteen kilometres across with its own weather, often with cloud spilling over the western wall while the floor stays clear.
You sleep on the rim tonight rather than back down in Karatu. That costs more and it is worth it. It puts you at the descent road when it opens at six, an hour ahead of the vehicles that stayed below, and that hour is the best of the crater day.
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch · Dinner
Travel
Ndutu to the Ngorongoro rim · about 100 km, 2½–3 hours · gravel, then the rim road
Highlight
A last morning on the plains, then 2,300 m and cold
Morning drive out
Ngorongoro rim, 2,300 m
Bring a fleece
Where you sleep
Pakulala Safari Camp: Tent interior with two queen beds, patterned throws and bedside lanterns
COMFORT

Pakulala Safari Camp

★★★★☆
Ngorongoro Conservation Area, on the rim
On the rim itself, so the morning descent is minutes rather than an hour. Fires lit, blankets on the beds.
Entamanu Ngorongoro: Main lounge: guests by the fireplace
LUXURY

Entamanu Ngorongoro

★★★★★
Ngorongoro Conservation Area, rim-edge lodge
Rooms facing into the crater, the floor below the window at first light.
Zebras on the Ngorongoro Crater floor
Down into the crater, then the road to Arusha
03°10′S 35°35′E
You descend at first light. The road drops six hundred metres in a few kilometres and you are on the floor before the cloud lifts. Vehicles are limited to six hours on the crater floor by regulation, so the morning is timed and there is no lingering over breakfast; it comes with you.
The crater holds what Ndutu does not: black rhino. There are only a few dozen and they are usually distant, so bring the binoculars. Add lion that walk past the wheel without looking up, old elephant bulls with the heaviest ivory left in the north, hyena, buffalo, and flamingo on Lake Magadi when the water level allows. Around twenty-five thousand large animals inside 260 square kilometres. It is not wild the way the plains are wild. It is a spectacle, and after three days of open horizon that is a good note to end on.
Up the ascent road around midday, lunch, then east to Arusha or straight to Kilimanjaro International, which is roughly four hours from the rim. An evening flight works. An early-afternoon one does not — tell us your flight time before we confirm the shape of this day.
Meals
Breakfast · Lunch
Travel
Crater floor until midday · rim to Arusha about 190 km, 4 hours · crater rim to JRO about 190 km
Highlight
Black rhino on the Lerai flats, and out by early afternoon
Dawn descent
Six-hour floor limit
Onward to Zanzibar possible
Where you sleep
Departure day — no overnight
III · Rates

What it costs, by group size

A safari gets cheaper per person as the vehicle fills. Choose a tier to see the table.
Comfort rates by group size, per person and group total
Group sizeRoomsPer personGroup total
1 guest1 room$6,100$6,100
2 guests1 room$4,300$8,600
3 guests2 rooms$4,350$13,050
4 guests2 rooms$3,890$15,560
5 guests3 rooms$4,000$20,000
6+ guests3 rooms$3,750$22,500
Single supplement
$980
Added when a guest does not share a room
Child, 3 – 11 years
30% off
Sharing with two adults
Peak season uplift
Included in the rates above
Late January – February, 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.

What is included

What is not

V · Add-ons

Worth adding, if you have the days

Priced separately and arranged on request.
A balloon above the migrating herds
Ndutu · at dawn

Balloon over the calving ground

An hour over the plains at first light in the weeks the herds are on them, landing to breakfast in the grass. Weather-dependent, minimum age <span class=”it-todo”>7, to confirm</span>, and booked months ahead.
USD 750 per person
A lioness with her cubs
After day 5

A fourth night at Ndutu

If your dates fall in the peak weeks, a fourth night is the cheapest way to improve the trip. It buys one more dawn on the plains and insures against the day the herds are on the far side.
USD 970 per person, for 2 guests
A Maasai homestead
Day 2, from Karatu

Lake Eyasi, the Hadzabe morning

Instead of a quiet afternoon in Karatu, a dawn drive down to Lake Eyasi to walk out with Hadzabe hunters. Arranged directly with the community and paid to them.
USD 110 per person, for 2 guests
Dhows moored off a white-sand beach on Zanzibar
After day 7 · 3–5 nights

Zanzibar, afterwards

Flights leave Arusha and Kilimanjaro daily and take under two hours. January to March is dry and hot on the coast, so the beach works in these months as well as the plains do.
From USD 1,340 per person, 3 nights
VI · The ground

Where this itinerary takes you

One ecosystem, two jurisdictions. The plains do not know where the boundary is.
Wildebeest in the Ngorongoro Crater

Ndutu, Ngorongoro Conservation Area

The south-western corner of the conservation area, where acacia woodland around two alkaline lakes meets the open short-grass plain. Off-road driving is permitted here, and between late December and March it is the centre of the calving.
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 live on 260 square kilometres of crater floor, including the most reliable black rhino in Tanzania.
Dawn over the Serengeti

Serengeti National Park

The plains at Ndutu run straight into the southern Serengeti without a fence, and the herds cross the line daily. Inside the park you stay on the tracks; the wildlife is the same on both sides.
The question everyone asks

Will the herds be at Ndutu when we come?

~8,000
Calves born a day at the peak, mid-January to February
Probably, if you travel between late December and March, and most reliably in late January and February. The migration reaches the southern plains with the short rains and stays while the grass is green, which is roughly those months. Calving is tightly synchronised — around half a million calves in about three weeks — and the peak usually falls in the first half of February.
What we cannot tell you is where on the plains they will be on a given morning. That is decided by where it rained the night before. Ndutu, Kusini, the Gol kopjes and Hidden Valley are all within reach of camp, and three nights is what makes reaching them possible. December is early and the herds may still be arriving; late March is late and they may be moving north-west. If your dates fall at either edge we will say so.
VII · Season

The best time to travel

One window. We will tell you when your dates fall outside it.
This route works in one window: late December to March. The herds arrive on the southern plains with the short rains, calve in late January and February, and stay while the grass lasts. January and February are the weeks to book. Expect hot days, green grass, afternoon storms that pass in an hour, and more vehicles than the plains see at any other time — though far fewer than the crater sees in August.
Late December is the early edge. The herds are usually on the plains by Christmas but calving has not started, and the festive weeks carry a rate uplift. March is the late edge: calves are on their feet, the predator activity is still high, and by the end of the month the herds are starting to pull north-west.
April and May are the long rains. The herds have left Ndutu, the seasonal camps are taken down, and the plains are empty. We will not sell you this route in those months; we would rather build you something else.
June to November the southern plains are dry and largely empty of the migration, which is in the west, then the north. The crater is good all year, but a trip built around Ndutu in those months is a trip built around nothing. Our northern Serengeti route is the one for July to October.
VIII · Flights

Getting there and back

Fly into Kilimanjaro International. Day 1 is a night in Arusha whatever time you land.
Fly into Kilimanjaro International (JRO). It is about an hour from Arusha and this itinerary is built around it. Nairobi and Dar es Salaam both work but both add a day.
Day 1 is a night in Arusha whatever time you land, so an evening arrival costs you nothing. If you can arrive a day earlier still, the extra night is cheap insurance against a delayed bag — there are no shops on the plains.
Coming home, day 7 ends with a crater morning and about four hours on the road to JRO. A flight leaving after 20:00 works comfortably. One leaving mid-afternoon does not, and if that is what you have we will reshape the last day rather than have you miss the crater.
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 on arrival.
IX · Other costs

What else you will spend

Visas, insurance, tips and drinks — set out so there is no surprise on the ground.
Tanzania issues a tourist visa online (eVisa) or on arrival at Kilimanjaro. Applying in advance is faster and avoids the queue at immigration, which after an evening arrival can be long.
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.
We ask every guest to travel insured. Medical cover and evacuation are the parts that matter here — the nearest hospital to Ndutu is a flight away, not a drive.
Check that your policy covers safari activity and any add-on you have booked. Balloon flights are excluded by some insurers.
Tipping is customary in Tanzania and it is genuinely optional. The figures below are what guests commonly give, not what is expected of you, and no one will treat you differently for giving less.
Guide tips are usually handled at the end of the trip; camp staff tips go into a shared box so that the kitchen and the people who fill the bucket showers are included, not only the people you see.
Drinking water in the vehicle is included throughout. Bar drinks at the camps are charged to your tent unless the camp is explicitly all-inclusive; some of the mobile camps at Ndutu are, and we will tell you which when we quote.
Souvenirs, laundry at the camps, and anything you forgot to pack. Cash in small US dollar notes is more useful than a card once you leave Karatu — the Ndutu camps have little or no connection, and cards fail more often than they work.
Notes dated before 2009 are refused across Tanzania. Bring newer ones.
X · Why us

Why book this with us

01

Arusha-based, and Tanzanian-owned

The vehicles, the guides and the office are ours, in Arusha. When the herds move forty kilometres overnight, the plan moves with them the same morning, without a phone call to another country.
02

Three nights at Ndutu, not two

Most calving itineraries give the plains two nights and spend one of them arriving. The third night is the one that lets you follow the herds rather than hope they are where you are.
03

One guide for the week

The same person from the airport to the airport. On the plains that matters more than anywhere: finding a cheetah on open ground is a skill, and so is knowing when to leave one alone.
04

We will tell you if your dates are wrong

This route has a window and edges. If your week falls in early December or April we will say so and offer you something that works, rather than sell you empty plains.
XI · Questions

Frequently asked

What guests ask before booking this itinerary.
The rate depends on your group size and which accommodation tier you choose, and the peak weeks in late January and February carry an uplift. 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.
The herds are usually on the southern plains from late December to March. Calving is concentrated into about three weeks, most often late January into February, with the peak in the first half of February. Nature does not keep a calendar, so treat those as the likely weeks rather than fixed dates. Our month-by-month guide sets out the whole year.
No, and anyone who guarantees it is guessing. What we can say is that in the peak weeks thousands of calves are born every morning across the plains, births are over in minutes, and with three nights at Ndutu and off-road driving your odds are as good as they can be made. We wrote about what a morning there actually looks like in this story.
Ndutu is inside the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a few kilometres from the park boundary, and the herds cross that line daily. The practical difference is that off-road driving is permitted at Ndutu and not inside the national park, so a sighting on open ground can be approached rather than watched from the track. See our Ngorongoro and Serengeti pages for both.
Because seven days is what it is. Adding either would cost a night at Ndutu, and the third night at Ndutu is the point of the trip. Tarangire is also at its quietest in these months, with the elephants dispersed away from the river. If you have ten days we can add Seronera on the way out; ask.
It is a private safari, so it can be. The days at Ndutu start before sunrise and involve a lot of watching, and the predator activity is not gentle — calves are the point, and so is what eats them. We would suggest eight and over. Some camps set their own minimum ages, and child rates are 30% below the adult rate for children sharing with two adults.
Three of the seven days are transfers — Arusha to Karatu, Karatu to Ndutu, and Ndutu to the crater rim — and two of those have a game drive built into them. Days 4 and 5 are spent entirely on the plains. Exact drive times for this itinerary are about 3 to 4 hours on each driving day; the gravel from Lodoare gate to Ndutu is the slow stretch and we would rather quote it honestly.
No. Night drives are not permitted in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area or the Serengeti. Game viewing runs from dawn to dusk, and on this route dawn is where the action is anyway.
Yes, and January to March is a good time for it — dry and hot on the coast. Flights from Arusha and Kilimanjaro take under two hours and run daily. Three to five nights is the usual shape. Rates are from USD 1,340 per person for three nights.
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.

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

Calving season on the Ndutu plains

7
Days
6
Nights
Jan – Mar
Season
Full
Board
Starts
Arusha, Tanzania
Ends
Arusha, Tanzania
Departures
Daily — a private safari on the dates you choose
Availability
Open all year, subject to lodge space
From
from$3,750/pp
Per person, sharing
Private safari · no booking fee · we reply within one working day
from $3,750 / person
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