11-Day Women-Only Safari — The Great Migration + Zanzibar

Welcome to Tanzania. We arrange up to two arrival transfers on Day 1 to collect guests from the airport and take you straight to your lodge in Arusha. If you land in daylight, look out the window — on a clear afternoon, Kilimanjaro is hard to miss, you can see it clearly.

Settle in, rest by the pool, or take a short walk into Arusha if you have the energy. In the evening, once the whole group has arrived, you'll sit down together for a welcome dinner. This is where you meet everyone — your fellow travellers, your female trip manager, and your guide, who will walk you through what to expect over the days ahead.

After breakfast, your female driver-guide picks you up and you head south-west to Tarangire. This park has more elephants than anywhere else in Tanzania — you'll often see herds of 50 to 100 gathered near the Tarangire River. Lions, leopards, giraffes and over 550 bird species share the park with them.

Tarangire has a look all of its own: open grassland scattered with huge, ancient baobab trees. You'll spend the day driving through it, stopping wherever animals appear, with a picnic lunch under the shade of an acacia. You end the day driving north towards the Ngorongoro area as the sun goes down.

You head down into the Ngorongoro Crater early in the morning — a massive collapsed volcano, 600 metres deep and 260km² wide, with over 30,000 animals living inside it. It has the highest density of lions in Africa, permanent black rhino, large bull elephants, and flamingos gathering at the soda lake on the crater floor.

The animals here have grown up around safari vehicles, so they don't run. Lions often sleep right on the track. You'll eat a picnic lunch down on the crater floor, then drive back up to the rim and return to the lodge for a second night.

Today you drive into the Serengeti — one of the biggest wildlife areas on earth. The drive over is not just a transfer; you stop whenever animals appear along the way. Then the plains open out and you get your first real feel for the Serengeti: huge sky, golden grass stretching in every direction, and a lion lying in the road without any interest in moving.

An afternoon game drive follows, ending with sundowner drinks out in the bush as the light fades. Most guests tell us this is the evening they remember most.

Two full days tracking the Great Migration as it moves north. During this season you could find yourself among hundreds of thousands of wildebeest and zebra, with the possibility of a river crossing at the Mara. The Central Serengeti also has large resident lion prides and cheetah year-round, and your guide keeps in close contact with the wider ranger network to know where the action is.

No rushing — full mornings and afternoons in the vehicle, picnic lunches out in the open, and a slow drive north towards the river systems where the herds gather in the evening.

One last morning out in the vehicle before heading to the airstrip for your internal flight to Zanzibar. By mid-afternoon you're stepping off the plane into warm, salt-laced air — the dust of the bush behind you, the Indian Ocean ahead.

Two full days with nothing on the schedule. White sand, warm water, and nowhere to be. Swim, read, take a kayak out, or try some snorkelling over the reef. After seven days of early mornings and long drives, the pace here is a welcome change — you can be as active or as quiet as you like.

Stone Town is a tightly packed old town built from coral stone, full of narrow alleyways, carved wooden doors and covered markets. You'll walk through the old Arab Fort, the former Slave Market and the Darajani spice market, where cloves, cinnamon and cardamom have been traded for centuries. A spice farm tour into the interior is available as an optional add-on if you want to walk through the plantations and taste as you go.

Once the guided walk is done, the rest of the time is yours — wander at your own pace, browse the shops, or sit by the seafront and watch the wooden dhows come in.

A final breakfast, and depending on your flight time, one last walk on the beach before your transfer to Zanzibar Airport. Eleven days, four ecosystems, and a group of women who started as strangers.