Itinerary #6 – Tanzania camping details and distances

Our Tanzania journey consisted of 2 legs:

· Leg 1 going north from Malawi to Rwanda, following the western border along Lake Tanganyika to exit into Rwanda at the Rusoro border post.

· Leg 2 going south from Kenya to Malawi, crossing the northern part of Tanzania from west (Lake Victoria) to east (Indian Ocean), following the coast down to Dar es Salaam, doing a short detour to Zanzibar, and then following the tar road south to Malawi again to the Ipinda border.

Top recommendations:

· Even through the road between the Serengeti and Ngorogoro Crater is truly horrible, the freedom of being able to go where you want to within the parks is a big plus! And the public campsites within the Serengeti we found more than adequate – no need for a private site at all.

· A number of the campsites are on working farms, with incredible farm fresh produce that one should miss! These include Simba Farm Lodge & Camp, Irente Farm Lodge & Camp as well as The Old Farmhouse at Kisonlanza.

Top tip / advisable changes to our itinerary:

· We ideally wanted to continue to follow the coast south from Dar es Salaam all the way to Mozambique, but unfortunately due to the violent insurgent uncertainty in Northern Mozambique, we had to change our route south to go back through Malawi. As a result we didn’t explore some of the beautiful sites along the coast, or Mafia Island.

· Our original plan was to go to Zanzibar with Firefly’s own ferry, directly from Bagamoyo – there is also safe storage for overlanding cars. That would’ve enabled us to skip Dar es Salaam all together. Because we went in offseason, their ferry was not running, which meant we had to go to Dar to first to store Aardvark, and then we took a small plan to Zanzibar. The plane ticket (onboard a small 12 seater) was cheaper than a ferry ticket, and way more scenic…we’ll just have to plant a couple more trees to offset the carbon footprint J

Our 29 day and 4,355km itinerary: