Tanzania, Kenya or Botswana, which safari country suits you
The Serengeti covers 14,763 square kilometres, which is 5,700 square miles. The Masai Mara covers 1,510, around 583 square miles. So the Serengeti is nearly ten times the size, and it does not take anything like ten times the visitors for every square kilometre of it.
That is the kind of difference that decides how a safari feels, and no brochure puts it in front of you.
We only organise trips in Tanzania, so there is nothing in it for us when we point somebody towards Kenya or Botswana, and that is exactly why we can do it when another country fits better. Safari is a Swahili word and it means journey, which is the useful way to think about this. The question is not which country is best. It is which one fits the journey you are trying to take.
Below, what each country is good at and where it falls short. At the end, five situations in which we would send you somewhere else.
How busy Tanzania gets, and where you get around it
Crowding here is not everywhere. It sits in three places at three moments, and once you know which three, it becomes a planning question instead of an objection.
The floor of the Ngorongoro Crater, where every vehicle comes down the same few descent roads onto the same 260 square kilometres, around 100 square miles. Seronera in the central Serengeti, where most of the lodges sit and where almost everybody starts. And the river crossings in the north in high season, when dozens of vehicles can be lined up on one bank waiting for the same thing to happen.
Outside those three, there is a great deal of room.
The answer is not to avoid the park. It is to plan differently. Ndutu is busy in February too, and we would rather say so than let you find out on the day. A guide who joins the line of cars ends up where everybody else is, and a guide who knows the ground drives the other way and finds his own sighting. Put a few days at Ndutu alongside a few days up around Lobo and you get both, without a week in traffic. In Ruaha or Katavi you can go out for a whole day and meet two other vehicles.
A trip somebody has worked out is a different trip from one somebody has booked. We live here, and we know which months are busy where.
What Tanzania gives you, and what it costs in distance
In one country you have the savannah of the Serengeti, the caldera at Ngorongoro, the highest mountain in Africa, montane rainforest with wild chimpanzees, the Rift Valley lakes, and a tropical island in the Indian Ocean. No other safari country has that list complete.
Now the half that costs you something. Mahale sits on Lake Tanganyika in the far west, the Serengeti is in the north, and Zanzibar is off the east coast. Seeing all of it takes three weeks, or internal flights, or choices.
Most of the itineraries we build leave some of it out. They run the northern circuit and finish at the coast, which fits into two weeks without the trip turning into travel.
Tanzania or Kenya
This is the comparison almost everybody makes, and the difference that matters is not the one the brochures argue about.
The migration runs through both countries, and for most of the year the herds are on the Tanzanian side. The river crossings happen in the northern Serengeti as well as in the Mara.
The difference that matters is room. The Serengeti is nearly ten times the size of the Mara and it does not carry ten times the visitors. The Mara is far busier for every square kilometre of it, so a sighting without a row of vehicles beside it is a more ordinary thing here.
What Kenya wins is the conservancies around the Mara. These private areas allow off-road driving and night drives, and they cap the number of vehicles, and national parks in Tanzania do neither. Travellers also rate the average lodge standard in Kenya higher, and we will write that down rather than leave it out.
Tanzania or South Africa
South Africa wins on three things, and they are worth saying plainly.
Rhino. South Africa has tens of thousands. Tanzania has a few hundred in the whole country, so your chance of seeing one there is far higher.
Malaria-free areas. Some South African safari areas have none, which can decide the matter if you are travelling with young children or while pregnant. All of Tanzania is a malaria area.
Driving yourself. Self-drive is ordinary in South Africa. Here it is possible and specialist, the distances are long, and the park tracks take experience.
What Tanzania wins is scale, and the feeling of being out in it. The parks have no fences and no tarred roads running through them. Guests who know both countries tell us that is the difference between visiting a park and being in Africa. And Tanzania has the migration, which South Africa does not.
Tanzania or Botswana
A review-based country ranking puts Botswana first and Tanzania second. We start there, because if we left it out you would have no reason to trust the rest of this page.
Botswana keeps visitor numbers deliberately low and charges accordingly, and the result is that you are more often alone at a sighting than anywhere else in Africa. If that is the thing you are buying and the budget allows it, go there.
What Tanzania has that Botswana does not is the migration, more than a million wildebeest following the rain, in one place.
The south and the west, where Tanzania works differently
Almost everybody who comes to Tanzania does the northern circuit and misses half the country.
Ruaha, Nyerere and Katavi run under different rules. You can go out on a night drive, and you can walk into the park on foot with an armed ranger. Neither is allowed in the northern parks. Park fees there are a fraction of the Serengeti.
This is close to what people usually go to Zambia for. You can have it here, and the catch is distance, because it is further and it means a flight.
Nyerere also has a river, the Rufiji, which you can go out on by boat. A day on the water is a different day from a day in a vehicle.
When we recommend another country
Five situations in which we would not put you in Tanzania.
- If rhino are the main point, South Africa, Kenya or Namibia.
- If you want to be alone at every sighting, Botswana does it without trying. Tanzania can do it, and only if the trip is planned for it from the start, so say so if that is your main wish.
- If you want to drive yourself, Namibia or South Africa.
- If you need to avoid malaria, the malaria-free areas of South Africa.
- If what you mainly want is gorillas, Uganda or Rwanda.
We only organise trips in Tanzania, which is exactly why we can write that down.
It is also why we know what this country can do inside one trip. You can walk on Kilimanjaro or through the Rift Valley, stand in the middle of the migration, and finish on a beach on Zanzibar, without being handed over to anybody.
Is Tanzania safe
We live here with our children, so it is a question we ask ourselves rather than one we wave away.
On safari you have a guide with you for the whole trip, a route that is set in advance, and nights in places we know and chose ourselves. You are never out there on your own, and that is the main reason safaris here run calmly.
The big cities work the way big cities work anywhere, and safari guests rarely spend time in them. Travel advice changes and it differs by area, so read your own government’s current advice rather than a line on an operator’s website. We live here and we follow it.
Frequently asked questions
Is Tanzania or Kenya better for a first safari
Tanzania wins on space and on the chance of a quiet sighting. Kenya wins if off-road driving and night drives matter to you, which its conservancies allow.
Is Tanzania more expensive than Kenya
Yes. Park fees here are higher and that lifts the daily cost. The gap between the two countries is smaller than the gap between two lodges inside either of them.
Where do you see the migration best
December to March at Ndutu in the south, where the calves are born. June to October in the north, for the river crossings.
Can you see the Big Five in Tanzania
Four of the five on an ordinary northern route. The black rhino is the exception, with a few hundred in the country and the floor of the Ngorongoro Crater the place you have a real chance.
Which safari country is the least crowded
Botswana, by design. Within Tanzania it is Ruaha, Nyerere and Katavi, and parts of the Serengeti and the country around Lake Natron are quiet too.
Can you self-drive in Tanzania
It is allowed, and we would not recommend it for a first trip. The distances are long, the park tracks take experience, and without a guide you see a great deal less. For self-drive, South Africa and Namibia are the countries set up for it.
Which country suits you
It depends on what you want to see, how much time you have, and who you are travelling with. This page cannot answer that for you. Twenty minutes on a call usually can.
See our safaris in Tanzania
Or request a call and we will work it out with you, and if the answer is another country, you will hear that too. Safari njema.