Now that I’ve seen my mountain, we’re headed north-west to complete the core-loop of the Tanzanian tourist trail by means of a safari. Safari means ‘journey’ in Swahili. We chose to organise our trip with Tanzania Journeys, a well-regarded tour operator that features in our Ethical Travel Guide and is recommended by the worthy Kilimanjaro Porters Association Project. As a bonus, the firm is based in Moshi, rather than the more usual location of Arusha. This was good news for us because (a) were already in Moshi and (b) we’ve heard of too many recent incidents in Arusha to be completely comfortable in visiting the town. Shame.

After handing Mark, the British-born proprietor, what was for us an inordinately large sum of money–worsened by the fact that the largest printed note in Tanzania is equivalent to only about four quid–we set off in our modified Toyota Landcruiser 4×4 with our driver-guide, Rama, our cook, Happy, a boot full of camping gear and two spare tyres.

Our five day circuit takes us through Lake Manyara, the Serengeti and into the Ngorongoro Crater. We started with Lake Manyara, which has neither the size nor the international status of the Serengeti. Nevertheless, I particularly enjoyed this park as it was the first time that I had ever seen animals of this nature in the wild. Rather than harp-on about what we saw, I’ll leave you to flick through the photos below, although our guide would want me point out how rare it is to see a tree-climbing lion; in fact, we saw three in one tree! (Apparently tree-climbing lions do not exist outside of Lake Manyara.)

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