Planning our African Safari

After our marriage, we wanted to find common activities that both Divya and myself enjoyed. Divya enjoyed hiking and while we did go on a few hiking trips - it was not something I personally enjoyed. Eventually we found we were both passionate about wildlife. We loved the outdoors even more when there was a bird, animal or critter to observe. Given this, Africa came up multiple times on the places we wanted to visit. Though originally I was more of the person observing wildlife through binoculars, I’m now into wildlife videography and experimenting with my Sony A7 SIII gear. We do not receive commission and are not affiliated with any of the companies and our thoughts noted below are purely from our experience using them. Same goes for the tour operators mentioned below.

When it comes to Africa, the usual destinations that come to mind are Serengeti in Tanzania or Masai Mara in Kenya. I have done African Safari a few times and visited Masai Mara, Selous, Ruaha, Uganda and Botswana. Divya and myself went to India - Corbett National park in Feb’23 and we were hooked with wildlife and very fortunate to see tigers in almost all of our game drives. We decided to pick Serengeti / Masai Mara due to relatively easy abundance of wildlife for photography even though we knew capturing rhino footage will be difficult. We both are not necessarily going after record counts and know wildlife can be unpredictable. As long as we can observe wildlife doing wildlife things we are happy. I brought up with Divya that since we were already in Africa ( and it being long flights for us especially from West coast); we should probably do some gorilla tracking as well. So initial plans were to do Serengeti / Masai Mara for wildlife and Uganda / Rwanda for Gorillas.

I do love wildlife and have been following TripAdvisor forum, Safaritalk and Fodors forum for years. And from my past experiences knew that for a Safari, especially seeing wildlife, more than anything, guides matter the most. As an example, while tracking a leopard in Okvango delta, the leopard disappeared in thick grasses and our Kwando lodge guide was excellent to know from the behavior that a small bird is flying over the leopard and where the bird is getting out of the thick bushes of grass is likely where we would end up seeing the leopard. I was able to witness some of the best leopard sighting of a female leopard finally climbing the tree and posing on the tree. The main criteria, at least for us ,for Big five safari was not necessarily luxury / high end camps but emphasis on guiding. We do photography and knew we want to go with a private vehicle given our priorities and preferences. Based upon my research, I contacted The Wild Source for Kenya / Tanzania since they have excellent guides and Churchill Wildlife Safaris based in Uganda for Rwanda / Uganda since I travelled with them prior for my Uganda safari and had no issues. With Gorilla tracking, since most of the tracking is actually done by national park rangers - it doesn’t necessarily matter much about having specialized guide unless maybe to explain behavior prior to actual tracking. Our planning started in Oct’22 for Kenya/Tanzania & Nov’22 for Uganda/Rwanda for a Sep’23 / Oct’23 trip.

We worked with Emily from The Wild Source for coming up with an itinerary and through our calls with her - knew that for seeing the great migration we might have to visit parks in Jul / August. We also let her know that we would like to stay in at least 2 different areas of park to see different areas of park and wildlife. Since this is Divya’s 1st trip to Africa and I knew from my past trips witnessing migration in Masai Mara that it’s usually a waiting game and not necessarily guaranteed to see crossing and even if you see crossing - to see predators catching the wildebeest or zebras is not guarantee as well. We decided that great migration is not a factor for us to plan our safari. One of our other requirements were to have en-suite bathrooms and not having bucket showers which could affect the camps we select. Emily initially shared itinerary for Ngorongoro crater, Serengeti and Masai Mara. Based upon our photography interests, she suggested some of the camps in Masai mara with photography focused vehicles.One of the things while going through the itinerary required us to catch a plane from Serengeti area to Masai Mara and upon discussing with Divya, we both agreed that doing Masai Mara for just 3 -4 days will not be sufficient; we would like to visit 2 different camps there -so our final decision was to do only Ngorongoro crater and Serengeti in Tanzania. Also Emily was able to get us a good Luxury camps deal while traveling in early October and we decided to go with that. Advantages for us having a private guide is that we could spend entire day in the park. My past trips - I did typical safari activities that were offered : morning game drive, afternoon rest in lodge, late afternoon game drive followed by sundowner and then back to lodge for dinner. Once going with Divya to India and seeing some of her images captured during golden hours of evening sunlight, I realized that we miss some amazing footage moments if doing sundowners and just relaxing instead of not being around wildlife. I have never done full day game drives before so this will be an interesting learning experience from that perspective. We plan to do full day game drives while being at Serengeti National Park.

I had worked with Ether from Churchill Wildlife Safaris for my Uganda trip 10 +years ago. Reached out to her and she / Zanie suggested Uganda / Rwanda for Gorilla tracking. One of the requirements for us, especially while carrying heavy photography gear, was not too strenuous hikes and hence Ether suggested Rwanda purely from that aspect even though Gorilla permits cost 2X compared to Uganda. Also from a logistics point of view due to our limited vacation days, traveling to / from Bwindi from Kigali airport would add additional few days. Based upon this decided to pick Rwanda for Gorilla tracking - again purely from my past experience knew that doing only 1 tracking might not be enough and since we were already spending a bit to get there; we would do 2 days of tracking. Also we will be doing Golden Monkey tracking while in Rwanda and potentially some bird watching around Volcanoes National park post gorilla tracking if we up to it.

Both The Wild Source and Churchill Wildlife Safaris were flexible when we wanted to shift some days around and making necessary adjustments. For example, for flying to Kigali from Kilimanjaro ; we noticed that there were direct flights only on some days and we accordingly asked them for an additional day at one of the Serengeti camps so that we can fly on a direct flight to Kigali from logistics perspective. Also, our flight was going to land in Kilimanjaro airport late night / early morning - so we requested an additional night stay in Arusha and were able to request a Arusha National Park game drive during our stay in Arusha. Also based upon our specific interests, Emily suggested guide and made sure to have him available for our trip.As we had a late night / early morning flight from Kigali back to US; requested an additional night stay in Kigali before our flight that Churchill Wildlife Safaris were happy to help with. Both the companies do accept credit cards if needed for payment, obviously there are some additional fees / charges if going that route.

Flight: From San Francisco, our main choices to fly into Kilimanjaro and out of Kigali were Air France / KLM, Turkish Airlines and Qatar airways. In terms of timing and cost perspective, we decided to go with Turkish Airlines for this trip. We like to travel with very few stops, limited travel duration and not book multiple flights to make connections and that played part in our decision. For flying from Kilimanjaro to Kigali, we picked Rwand air since they offered direct flights.

Travel itinerary:

Fly from SFO to JRO. Reach Kilimanjaro Airport late night and then transportation to Arusha - stay at The African Tulip for 2 nights. We will do Arusha National Park one of the evening during our stay here. We will then drive from Arusha to Ngorongoro conservation area and stay there overnight at Sanctuary Ngorongoro crater camp. Ngorongoro crater offers us the possibility to see black rhino and complete big 5 species list while on this Safari. Next day, we will drive from Ngorongoro area to Central Serengeti and will be staying at Lemala Nanyukie for 4 nights - reason for selection being relatively less crowds and good concentration of cheetah. After 4 night stay at Lemala Nanyukie, head over to Lemala Kuria hills lodge in northern Serengeti for 4 nights. On our last day, bush plane transportation from Serengeti to Kilimanjaro airport and then from JRO to Kigali via RwandAir. Stay in Gorillas Golf Course Hotel overnight in Kigali. Drive from Kigali to Ruhengiri and stay for 3 nights at Davinci Lodge. We will be doing 2 days of gorilla tracking and 1 day golden monkey tracking. Then drive back to Kigali and stay evening for late night / early morning flight back from Kigali to SFO through Turkish Airlines.

Vaccination & Travel Health:

Yellow fever vaccinations were required for entering Rwanda and we were able to schedule and get our shots through Walgreens pharmacy. For Travel Health medications ( primarily anti-malarial and diarrhea), we consulted CVS minute clinic and got the necessary prescriptions. There were recommendation for Typhoid vaccine that we did not take.

Luggage Bag, Camera Bag & Baggage Allowance:

With Bush planes travel from Serengeti to Kilimanjaro, one of the requirements is to have soft shelled bags and the weight should be less than 15 lbs overall. Since our overall trip was over 15 days and even though most lodges we will be staying at offered laundry service, we would be definitely carrying more luggage than 15 lbs. So we went with option of an additional ticket in bush plane to account for carrying extra luggage.

For camera gear bag; I am using Thinktank Mindshift and my current bag contains camera body, 100 - 400 mm lens, 200 -600 mm lens, microphone, binoculars, dji osmo action 3.

Divya’s camera gear bag is also Thinktank Mindshift - her current bag contains 2 camera bodies, 70 - 200 mm lens, 600 mm lens, 1.4X teleconverter. Both of us have the lens mounted on our camera bodies while keeping in the bag and hence our preference for using this bag.

For soft shell luggage bag, I researched and found out US manufacturer Red oxx makes quality duffels for Safari and they can even fit on overhead bins in our regular flights. Even though a bit pricey, I went with the option of purchasing Safari-beanos PR5 medium duffel bag since we plan to use it on few trips and the reviews seem very good and they do have a lifetime warranty on their product. Divya selected LL Bean bag for her clothing.

“I feel like I’m nothing without wildlife. They are the stars. I feel awkward without them.” ~ Bindi Irwin