Arusha

The crater is a caldera — the collapsed remains of a volcano that was once, on the usual estimate, as tall as Kilimanjaro — roughly twenty kilometres across, with walls several hundred metres high and a floor of grassland, soda lake, swamp and acacia woodland. What makes it extraordinary is that the wildlife largely stays: unlike the open Serengeti, the crater holds a resident population year-round, including one of the densest lion concentrations anywhere and a small number of the black rhino that are difficult to see elsewhere in the country. A morning on the floor reliably produces more species in a few hours than a full day elsewhere. That density is also why it is busy. Vehicles descend on a controlled but substantial scale, the good sightings gather traffic quickly, and anyone expecting solitude has come to the wrong place — the southern parks guide covers where to find that instead. Go early, accept the company, and take the crater for what it is: a contained, spectacular, slightly zoo-like hour of Africa that nowhere else can match for sheer density. It is also worth understanding that the crater is not part of the migration, which passes across the plains beyond it — the two are separate propositions and the migration guide explains where the herds actually are month by month.

Olduvai Gorge cuts through the conservation area east of the crater, and it is one of the most important archaeological sites in the world — the layered deposits here produced hominin remains and stone tools that reshaped the understanding of human origins across the twentieth century, and excavation continues. It is worth being honest about the visit: this is a modest museum, a viewpoint over a dry gorge and a short talk, not a spectacle. Its value is entirely in knowing what you are looking at, which is a landscape where the evidence of the earliest members of our own lineage was found in readable order. Given twenty minutes and no context it is a stop on the road; given an hour and the museum's explanation it reframes the whole drive. Around it stretch the highland plains, the shifting sand dune that migrates slowly across them, and the Maasai settlements of the conservation area — the only protected area in the country where people and wildlife share the land by design. Cultural visits are arranged from here, and how to tell a good one from a staged one is the subject of the cultural visits guide.

Mount Meru rises to 4,566 metres directly behind the town, and it is the mountain nobody photographs because Kilimanjaro is ninety minutes away. That is its advantage. The climb takes three or four days through forest, moorland and a dramatic ash cone with a crater rim walk, it is steeper and more interesting underfoot than the standard Kilimanjaro routes, and it costs a fraction as much. It is also the single best acclimatisation available before attempting Kilimanjaro — climbers who do Meru first summit the bigger mountain at a noticeably better rate, which the Kilimanjaro guide explains in terms of days at altitude. The park around it is small, green and unusually walkable: armed-guide walking safaris are permitted here, black-and-white colobus move through the canopy, giraffe and buffalo graze the lower slopes, and the Momella lakes hold flamingo. For anyone with a spare day at the start of a trip, this is a far better use of it than a second afternoon in town.

Arusha town sits at around 1,400 metres, which gives it a mild climate and a green, jacaranda-lined feel quite unlike the coast. It is a working East African city rather than a resort: a central market, a clock tower that guidebooks insist marks the midpoint between Cairo and Cape Town, a cultural heritage centre with a serious collection of contemporary African art, and a great many safari offices. The coffee grown on the surrounding slopes is excellent and the farm tours around the town are a genuine half-day. It is also where you will do the practical business of a Tanzanian trip — repacking into a soft bag for the light aircraft, storing the suitcase you cannot take, buying anything forgotten. Those constraints are set out in the transport guide and they are easier to meet here than anywhere else in the country. Two nights at the start, rather than one, turns a rushed handover into a proper beginning, and gives you the option of Meru or a coffee farm rather than an afternoon watching your operator load a vehicle.