10 Days Maasai Mara, Serengeti & Zanzibar Solo Safari
Join solo, share the vehicle and the campfire, keep your own room, finish on a Zanzibar beach
10 Days Maasai Mara, Serengeti & Zanzibar Solo Safari
Travelling alone doesn't have to mean watching a lion hunt alone. This safari brings together a small group of solo travellers, usually a mix of ages and nationalities, who share safari vehicles by day and a campfire at night, then retreat to their own private rooms. There's no pairing up with strangers, and nobody is the odd one out at dinner, because everyone arrived on their own.
The route is a classic. Begin at Lake Naivasha with hippos and a walk among giraffes on Crescent Island, then spend three nights in the Maasai Mara, where the group swaps binoculars, sightings and theories about which lioness is which. A light aircraft hops you into Tanzania for the Serengeti's kopjes and a sunrise descent into the Ngorongoro Crater, before the group flies to Zanzibar for two nights on the beach, by which point you'll know everyone's name and how they take their coffee.
Our guides are good at drawing a group together while leaving room for quiet time. You're met at the airport, accompanied throughout, and backed by a Nairobi team on call around the clock. Most groups leave with a chat thread that keeps running for years.
Ideal for: Independent travellers who want good company on safari by day and their own private room at night.
The journey in brief
You meet the group at a welcome dinner in Nairobi, then head into the Rift Valley for a night at Lake Naivasha, with a boat ride among hippos and a walk on Crescent Island. Three nights in the Maasai Mara follow, with morning and afternoon game drives, a full day on the plains, a Maasai homestead visit and evenings by the fire. Small planes then hop the group over the border, clearing immigration at Migori and Kogatende, for a night among the central Serengeti's kopjes. You then drive to the Ngorongoro highlands, descend into the crater at first light the next morning and fly on to Zanzibar for two nights on the south-east coast before heading home.
Highlights
Day by day
Arrive Solo, Dine Together
Your driver is waiting at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport with your name on a board, and within the hour you're checked in to your own room at the group's hotel in the suburbs. Fellow travellers arrive throughout the day, so if you land early, sleep off the flight or read by the pool. At half past six everyone gathers for a welcome drink: a group of strangers from different countries, all of whom chose to come alone, which turns out to be an excellent icebreaker. Your guide runs through the plan, the rhythm of game drives and how seats rotate so everyone gets a turn up front. Dinner is one long table, and the conversation runs late.
Hippos by Boat, Giraffes on Foot
After breakfast the group piles into the safari vehicles for the two-hour drive into the Great Rift Valley, stopping at an escarpment viewpoint where the valley floor stretches away to the crater rim of Mount Longonot, and the first group photo happens whether you planned it or not. At Lake Naivasha you board small boats for a ride among hippo pods, with fish eagles calling from the acacias along the shore. The boats drop you on Crescent Island, where you walk freely among giraffe, zebra and wildebeest; with no big predators on the island, it's a rare chance to be on foot among them. Dinner is by the lake, and the evening ends around the first of many fires.
Westward to the Maasai Mara
It's around five hours to the Maasai Mara, a journey that shows you the Kenya between the parks: wheat farms, roadside stalls stacked with cabbages and tomatoes, and the busy town of Narok, where the group stops for lunch and a stretch. The last hour is on rough red earth, and the vehicles' roofs pop up as zebra, topi and the first gazelles appear. You arrive at camp mid-afternoon, drop your bags in your room and head straight back out for a first game drive. Sightings come thick and fast, and the vehicles radio each other: a lioness with cubs here, elephants at the river there. Sundowners on the way home are loud with stories.
Dawn to Dusk on the Plains
Today you leave at first light with a packed breakfast and stay out until mid-afternoon, following the action across the plains. In the dry season the migration herds spread over the grasslands in their hundreds of thousands, and the vehicles may wait at the Mara River for a crossing; at other times of year the resident lions, cheetahs and leopards keep the guides busy. Breakfast and lunch are eaten under a tree, wherever the vehicles happen to be. Sharing a vehicle turns out to be a perk: more eyes spot more animals, and somebody always has the right lens or a spare pair of binoculars. Back at camp, there's time for a shower before dinner.
Village Morning, Campfire Night
A slower start. Anyone who booked the optional balloon flight is up at five, while everyone else chooses between an early drive and a lie-in. Mid-morning the group visits a Maasai homestead, where young men demonstrate the famous jumping dance, women explain what the colours in their beadwork mean, and you're invited into a low, smoky house of mud and cow dung to see how families live. The afternoon is free for the pool, your journal or a nap. At four the vehicles set out on a final Mara drive, and the evening ends around the campfire, where by now the group has its own running jokes and a shared list of favourite sightings.
Two Countries Before Lunch
Today you fly. After breakfast the group boards a light aircraft at the Mara airstrip for a short hop to Migori, where you're stamped out of Kenya, then over the border to Kogatende to be stamped into Tanzania, and on to Seronera, the Serengeti's central airstrip. It's all done in a morning, with bags limited to 15 kg in soft holdalls. Your Tanzanian guides meet the group on the airstrip with fresh vehicles. After lunch, the afternoon drive explores the Seronera River, where leopards rest in the branches of sausage trees and lion prides patrol the kopjes. Dinner is under canvas tonight, and the hyenas whooping in the dark are part of the soundtrack.
Kopjes at Sunrise, the Crater Rim by Nightfall
Make the most of the early light with a sunrise drive, when the cats are most active and the plains glow pink and gold. After breakfast the vehicles leave the park by the Naabi Hill gate, with a detour to Olduvai Gorge if time allows, where fossils of some of our earliest ancestors were found and a small museum tells the story. The road then climbs into the Ngorongoro highlands, and you reach the rim by late afternoon, the air suddenly crisp. From the viewpoint you look down into the crater, 600 metres below, its floor dotted with what look like ants but are in fact buffalo. Dinner tonight is warm and hearty.
Into the Caldera, Out to the Ocean
You're through the gate soon after it opens and down the crater wall in the cool of the morning, when lions are still hunting and the light is soft. Over three or four hours you'll see buffalo, zebra, hyenas, flamingos on the soda lake and, with luck, a black rhino. Breakfast comes out of a cool box beside a hippo pool. By late morning the vehicles climb out and drive about an hour and a half to the Lake Manyara airstrip, where your Tanzanian guides say goodbye. A light aircraft carries the group to Zanzibar, usually with a stop in Arusha, and you step out into warm, salty late-afternoon air. A transfer to the coast and dinner close a very full day.
Salt Water and a Free Day
A free day on Zanzibar's south-east coast, where long white beaches face a shallow turquoise lagoon and the tide pulls back far enough to walk out towards the reef. Some of the group will sleep late and swim; others might try a kitesurfing lesson in the steady trade winds, or take a short trip to Jozani Forest to see the red colobus monkeys found nowhere else on earth. If you'd like a taste of history, Stone Town is about an hour away by road. Everyone reconvenes in the evening for a farewell dinner by the sea, with grilled fish, coconut rice, a toast to the group and promises to share photos.
Separate Flights, Shared Stories
The last morning is yours: a sunrise swim, a slow breakfast, a final walk along the sand while village women tend their seaweed farms in the shallows. Then the group goes its separate ways, with transfers timed to each person's flight from Abeid Amani Karume International Airport, an hour or so away. Many travellers fly home via Nairobi or Dar es Salaam, and a few choose to stay on the island a little longer. Before you go there'll be swapped numbers, a new group chat and probably a half-serious plan for the next trip together. You arrived in Nairobi on your own; you leave with people who know exactly how you take your coffee.
Your route
The parks, lakes and towns you'll travel through, in order.
What's included
Prices
Book as a group and the saving is applied to your quote.
Rates are per person per day, sharing a room, and cover everything under what's included. Your tailored quote confirms the final price for your dates. International flights are not included.
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10 Days Maasai Mara, Serengeti & Zanzibar Solo Safari · 10 days
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