The Serengeti, Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar in one country — and three different bills: the safari by the day, the mountain by the night, the island by an insurance paid at the door
Tanzania is a country where everything is paid up front and by a clear tariff: a €43 e-visa for passports that need one, Serengeti entry per person per day, the Ngorongoro crater descent per vehicle, and since 2024 Zanzibar charges a compulsory €38 insurance at the door. Add it all up before the ticket, and what remains is the best safari on the continent.
Where a visa is required, it is obtained online: the official Tanzanian immigration portal issues a single-entry tourist e-visa for €43, usually ready within a few days, though it is worth applying at least three weeks ahead in busier months. For Zanzibar, since October 2024, a compulsory travel insurance from the state insurer is paid on top, €38 per adult, through visitzanzibar.go.tz — your own travel policy does not replace it. A yellow fever card is required only when arriving from a risk country, which means a connection in Nairobi or Addis Ababa is worth checking in advance.
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The safari here is done in the north, out of Arusha, on what they call the northern circuit: Tarangire, Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro, Serengeti. Entry prices are public and add up fast — Serengeti €61 per person per day, Ngorongoro seventy dollars per person plus €255 per vehicle to descend into the crater, and eighteen percent VAT on all of it. That is why a modest group camping safari over five days costs around USD 900 to 1,100 a head, and the lodge version three to four thousand. Anyone planning to save by going alone cannot: the parks are entered with a registered vehicle and guide.
The country is not done in a week, but two weeks split cleanly: six days of safari, then a flight from Arusha or Kilimanjaro to Zanzibar for a week at the sea. Kilimanjaro is a separate bill — six to seven days of climbing with compulsory guide and porters, where park fees alone pass eight hundred dollars — and is done either instead of the safari or with another week. Dar es Salaam is for most people just a connection, and that is fine.
How it actually was when we were there, and what was worth it.
Where the herds are each month is known, the day of a river crossing is not, and the number in the brochures dates from the 1970s…
On Zanzibar two beaches ten kilometres apart do not have the same sea. The reason is not the hotel but the tide, and no photograph…
Kilimanjaro is not decided by who is fit but by who may go to altitude and how fast their sleeping height rises. Both are known before…
A twenty-kilometre crater of an extinct volcano, with six-hundred-metre walls and twenty-five thousand large animals on its floor. It has the highest density of lions in Africa, and it is the one place where a black rhino is close to a certainty.
5,895 metres, with no range around it, and the only summit of that height climbed without rope or ice axe. The glaciers on top have lost over eighty percent of their area since 1912; estimates say they are gone by mid-century.
The Sultanate of Oman moved its capital to the island in 1840 and ran the clove and slave trade for the whole of East Africa from here. The slave market closed in 1873; the Anglican cathedral stands on the site, with the altar exactly where the whipping post was.
Tanganyika and Zanzibar united in 1964, and the name is a blend of both. Zanzibar kept its own government, its own laws and — since 2024 — its own compulsory tourist insurance.
He was born in 1946 as Farrokh Bulsara to a Parsi family from India; the house the family lived in is now a small museum on the seafront. He spent his childhood on Zanzibar before India and then England.
On 27 August 1896 a British fleet shelled the sultan's palace in Stone Town; the war lasted between 38 and 45 minutes. The palace was destroyed, the sultan fled to the German consulate, and that was the end.
This isn't a ranking — it's a route. Any one of these could carry a whole trip.
The first park on the northern circuit, two hours from Arusha, with baobabs and the largest elephant herds in the country — several hundred around the river in the dry season. Less known than the Serengeti and therefore emptier; a day here at the start of a safari is a better opening than anything else.
A shallow lake under the Rift Valley wall, with a shoreline forest where lions lie on branches — here that is something you see, not a legend. Passed on the way to Ngorongoro, in half a day. The flamingos depend on the water level.
The largest park in the country, in the south, with the Rufiji river and a boat safari the north does not have. Reached by air from Dar es Salaam, and the alternative for a second visit or for anyone who wants Zanzibar without seven hours' drive to the Serengeti.
The northern island of the Zanzibar archipelago: greener, hillier and with a tenth of the main island's visitors. The diving is better than around Unguja, the beaches fewer. Half an hour by air from Stone Town; the €38 insurance applies here too.
An island south of Zanzibar, with a marine park and whale sharks that come from October to March and swim alongside the boats. No markets, no nightlife, just a handful of lodges. The Zanzibar insurance does not apply here, because Mafia is not administratively Zanzibar.
The name Tanzania is a portmanteau: it was formed in 1964 when Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged into one state. The first three letters come from one name and the next three from the other.
Tanzania holds both Africa's highest point, Kilimanjaro, and part of the continent's deepest lake, Tanganyika, at 1,470 metres. The bed of that lake is over six hundred metres below sea level.
Short answers to what people ask most before setting out.
Where one is required, it is obtained as an e-visa on the official Tanzanian immigration portal, €43 for single entry, usually ready within a few days. For Zanzibar a €38 insurance is paid on top — without it you do not clear immigration.
The entries are public: Serengeti €61 per person per day, Ngorongoro about USD 70 per person plus €255 per vehicle for the crater, all plus 18 percent VAT. With vehicle, guide and accommodation, five days of a group camping safari come to about USD 900–1,100 a head, in lodges 3,000–4,000.
They can, and that is the standard route: six days on the northern circuit out of Arusha, then a flight from Kilimanjaro to Zanzibar for a week at the sea. In that order — nobody gets up at five in the morning after the sea.
Keep going — these destinations and stories pair well with this one.
A safari charged by the day, not by the trip — a reserve whose gate fee doubles in July, while a whole trip costs only half as much more
An island where you do not choose a hotel but a coast — west for sunsets and calm sea, north for nightlife, east for wind, south for kitesurfing
A country of long distances and reversed seasons, driven on the left throughout
The whole of Tanzania fits into one query — six questions and you know which of them suits you.
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All photographs come from Wikimedia Commons and are used under the licence stated beside each one.
