Land at Kilimanjaro International Airport, where your Asante Tours guide is waiting. A private transfer takes you to Arusha, the gateway town for Tanzania's northern safari circuit.

Settle in among the coffee plantations, receive your welcome pack, and rest before the safari begins.

Break the drive to the highlands with a game drive through Lake Manyara National Park — a compact, lush park famous for its tree-climbing lions, big elephant bulls and flamingo-pink shallows.

Continue up the escarpment to the Ngorongoro Highlands, with a guided coffee-farm and garden walk in the afternoon.

Descend to the crater floor for a full day's game drive. Within the walls live black rhino, some of Africa's largest tusker elephants, big lion prides, hippo, hyena and clouds of flamingo on the soda lake.

A picnic lunch is taken beside the hippo pool before the climb back up to the rim in the late afternoon.

Drop down onto the southern Serengeti plains, passing through the Ndutu area where the migration calves between January and March.

Game-view all the way to your lodge, then head out again for an afternoon drive as the light softens over the grassland.

A full day in the Serengeti tracking the migration. Depending on the month, the herds may be massed on the southern plains, strung out along the western corridor, or gathering at the northern rivers.

Your guide follows the movement and the predators — lion, cheetah and hyena — that shadow the herds.

Move deeper into the Serengeti, transferring by game drive to a camp positioned closer to the current migration front.

The afternoon is spent on the plains — this is prime territory for a river crossing or a big cat kill, depending on the season.

A final full day on safari — an early start for the best light and animal activity, a slow midday break at camp, and an afternoon drive that runs into a sundowner on the plains.

Dinner is served under a sky with no light pollution for hundreds of kilometres.

One last game drive on the way to the airstrip, then a scenic flight back over the plains, the crater and the Rift Valley wall to Arusha.

Time for lunch and shopping in Arusha before your onward flight. Kwaheri — safe travels.