Things to Do in Tanzania

Kilimanjaro is 5,895 metres and needs no ropes or technical climbing, only the patience to go slowly enough to acclimatise. That is why the length of your route matters more than your fitness. Marangu in five days is the cheapest and the one most people turn back on. Machame over seven days, or Lemosho over eight, give your body the extra nights it needs and far more climbers reach Uhuru Peak. Go January to March or June to October.

Best Time: January - March, September - October

The Serengeti is where the migration happens, and where you go depends on when. The wildebeest calve on the southern plains around Ndutu in February, move west through the Grumeti in May and June, and reach the Mara River crossings in the north from July to October. Give it three nights at least, since a single day drive rarely finds the herds. Park fees and camp rates make these the most expensive nights of a Tanzania trip.

Best Time: January - March, June - October

Ngorongoro is a collapsed volcano with resident wildlife, which means the animals are there all year rather than passing through on a migration. Most visitors do one full day on the crater floor. Ask for a guided walk along the rim as well: the view down is the best part of it and there is no vehicle traffic. It lies 180 km west of Arusha.

Best Time: June - October

Known For : Stone Town Nungwi Beach Mnemba Island

Nungwi and Kendwa on the northern tip keep deep water at low tide, so you can swim at any hour, which is not true of the east coast where the sea pulls back a long way twice a day. Kendwa is the quieter of the two. Three or four nights here after a safari is the standard way Indian travellers put a Tanzania trip together.

Best Time: June - October; December - February

51 Attractions

Stone Town is the old quarter of Zanzibar City on the west coast of Unguja, and it is a walking place: carved doors, Omani and Indian merchant houses, the Old Fort, and the site of the former slave market with its memorial and cathedral. Half a day covers it. Come back at dusk for the food stalls at Forodhani Gardens on the seafront.

Zanzibar built its wealth on cloves, and the farms inland from Stone Town still grow nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla, cardamom and pepper. A guide walks you round, has you smell and taste as you go, and usually finishes with lunch. It takes half a day, pairs easily with Jozani Forest on the same trip, and works in any month.

Mnemba is a small private island about 3 km off Zanzibar's northeast coast, and the reef around it is the best snorkelling and diving on the island: turtles, wild dolphins in the open water and easy shallow coral for first timers. Boats leave from Matemwe and Nungwi. Visibility is clearest from December to March and June to October.

The Zanzibar red colobus lives nowhere else on earth, and Jozani is where you see it. Only about a thousand are left. The forest walk is short and flat, takes an hour or two, and includes a boardwalk through mangroves. Guides ask you to stay a few metres back from the troops. It is a short drive southeast of Stone Town and pairs with a spice farm.

Changuu, better known as Prison Island, sits 5.6 km northwest of Stone Town and holds a colony of Aldabra giant tortoises, some of them well over a century old. The prison was built but never actually used as one. Boats take about half an hour, the snorkelling off the sandbank is good, and the whole trip fits into a morning.

A dhow is the wooden sailing boat that has worked this coast for centuries, and an evening sail is the cheapest good thing to do in Zanzibar. Boats go out from Stone Town, Nungwi and Kendwa, usually for about two hours, often with fruit and a drink. Sunset falls close to 6.30 pm all year round this near the equator.

Paje on the southeast coast is one of the easiest places in the world to learn kitesurfing. The lagoon stays shallow and sandy a long way out and the wind blows across the shore rather than out to sea, which is exactly what a beginner needs. Schools line the beach. The reliable wind seasons are June to September and December to February.

Mount Meru is 4,562 metres, 70 km west of Kilimanjaro and visible from it on a clear day. Three or four days gets you up and down. Most people climb it as acclimatisation before Kilimanjaro, which is a sound idea, and a ranger walks with the group because the lower forest has buffalo and elephant in it. The trailhead is in Arusha National Park.

Mahale sits on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika with no road in, so you fly to the airstrip and finish the journey by boat. It holds the largest known chimpanzee population in Tanzania, and the trek to find them can take anything from twenty minutes to several hours uphill through forest. Allow three nights. The dry months from May to October are the practical ones.

Gombe is the smaller and far more reachable of Tanzania's two chimpanzee parks, an hour by boat north of Kigoma. It is where Jane Goodall began her research in 1960, and the habituated groups there are still studied today. Two days is enough. Take it if Mahale is off your route, since the chimpanzees are the same species.

Best Time: June - October

Maasai communities near Arusha and around Ngorongoro run their own visitor programmes, and picking one the community itself runs is the difference between a real visit and a staged one. You are shown a homestead, the cattle and how the beadwork is made and sold. Expect a couple of hours. Ask before photographing anyone.

Olduvai, or Oldupai in Maasai, is a 48 km ravine in the eastern Serengeti plains where the Leakeys uncovered some of the oldest hominin fossils and stone tools ever found. The small museum on the rim explains the layers you are looking at. It takes an hour and sits on the road between Ngorongoro and the Serengeti, so it costs you no extra driving.

Ol Doinyo Lengai is an active volcano that erupts a strange cool, runny lava found nowhere else on earth. The climb starts around midnight so you reach the crater at dawn and are back down before the heat, and it is steep and loose, about six hours up. Nearby Lake Natron is an alkaline lake where lesser flamingos breed. Give it two nights, and expect a rough drive.

Materuni village sits on Kilimanjaro's lower slopes above Moshi, and the Chagga families there grow arabica and take you through the whole thing: picking, pulping, drying, roasting in a pan over a fire and pounding it while everyone sings. You drink it at the end. The same walk carries on to the waterfall behind the village. Half a day.

Chemka, also called Kikuletwa, is a spring-fed pool in a grove of fig trees between Arusha and Moshi, clear enough to see the roots underwater. People swim, jump off the rope swing and eat lunch there. It is a half-day trip and a good thing to do the day after coming down from Kilimanjaro, when you want to move gently.

Known For : Lake Duluti Arusha Declaration Museum

Almost every northern safari and Kilimanjaro climb starts in Arusha, so you will spend a night here whether you planned to or not. Use it: the Cultural Heritage Centre, the central market, Lake Duluti for a walk, and the coffee shops where the guides drink. It is about an hour from Kilimanjaro airport. One day is plenty.

Best Time: June - October

21 Arusha Attractions

The Usambaras are old rainforest-covered mountains in the northeast, cool and green, and the walking here is village to village rather than summit focused. Lushoto is the base. Trails run from a couple of hours to three days with homestays along the way. It is the quiet, cheap part of Tanzania and it works best from June to October.

Mafia is its own archipelago south of Zanzibar, not part of it, and it is the calmer, less developed alternative. Whale sharks feed in the channel there and are usually around from October to March, best in the middle of that window. You snorkel with them from small boats. The reefs inside the marine park are excellent. Four nights.

Pemba is the northern island of the Zanzibar archipelago and it is greener, hillier and far quieter than Unguja. The diving is what brings people: steep walls dropping into deep water off the west coast, strong currents, and reef in better condition than the busier sites. It suits confident divers more than beginners. Three nights.

Bagamoyo was the capital of German East Africa and, before that, the coastal end of the caravan route that brought ivory and enslaved people from Lake Tanganyika. The German boma, the old Catholic mission and the ruins at Kaole are all walkable. It is about two hours north of Dar es Salaam and makes a straightforward day trip.

The fish market on Dar es Salaam's harbour front is loud, wet and completely unstaged, with the catch auctioned as it lands and grilled to order at the back. Go early, around seven, when the boats come in. Wear shoes you do not mind ruining. It is the best hour in a city most people only pass through on the way to Zanzibar.

Tingatinga is Tanzania's own style of painting, bright enamel animals on square board, started by Edward Saidi Tingatinga in Dar es Salaam in the 1960s. The cooperative at Oyster Bay is where his successors still work, and you can watch them paint before you buy. Prices are set at the stall rather than haggled hard. Half an hour.

Tanzanite comes from exactly one place on earth, a mining area of a few square kilometres in the Manyara region south of Arusha, and nowhere else. The Tanzanite Experience in Arusha explains how the stone forms and how to tell a natural one from a treated one before anybody offers to sell you anything. An hour, and worth it if you are thinking of buying.

Tanzanian food is Swahili food, which means African, Arab and Indian at the same time. Try ugali with nyama choma, pilau and biryani on the coast, mishkaki skewers off a street grill, chipsi mayai, and urojo soup in Zanzibar. Mandazi with chai is breakfast. Forodhani Gardens in Stone Town is the easiest place to try several in one evening.