For some reason I can’t quite explain, our time in Ruaha was and remains my favorite part of this trip. Maybe it is the seclusion and isolation that you get in being in a park that is both considerably larger than the Serengeti, while also being much less visited than its famous counterpart. Being so remote really puts the wild heart at peace as your experience of being at one in nature and the universe becomes visceral.

For our trip into this huge national park, we chose to stage within the game conservancy in a Northern region that borders the Masai Mara lands of Kenya. We like to dedicate at least a part of any safari trip to a private concession for a multitude of reasons related to experiences you cannot have inside most national parks, not the least of which, is the option to off road for special sightings.

Ngorongoro Crater is a very unique landscape set and the world's largest unbroken caldera in the world, where the majority of the animal population is resident and doesn’t participate in any migratory pattern. It is known for its amazing abundance of wildlife and diversity, as well as, having several different ecosystems all contained into this collapsed volcano.

Picture rolling verdant hills in the horizon studded with abundant exotic wildlife… Not exactly what comes to mind when you think of the Serengeti, is it? At least it wasn’t for me. I envisioned windswept yellow and red grassy savannah for as far as the eyes could see with thousands of wildebeests plodding along together in their endless search of rain as the followed The Great Migration roadmap.