The Grand Luxury Great Migration

Arusha Coffee Lodge

An old-fashioned island of quietude tucked away in a plantation, is a great place to unwind after the rigours of long flights.

Arusha is only 3 degrees south of the equator, but its 4,500-foot elevation encourages floral luxuriance and gentle airs. So we’ll be more or less surrounded by enthusiastic greenery as we sit on our Plantation Suite’s veranda—perhaps after a relaxing swim—looking up at massive Mount Meru, a 14,977-foot volcanic colossus that looms beneficently over this quintessentially African city.

A short flight takes us west into the Serengeti. Sasakwa airstrip 

* As Beryl Markham wrote in her marvelous West with the Night, “In the season of drought the Serengeti Plains are as dry and tawny as the coats of the lion that prowl them, and during the rains they provide the benison of soft grass to all the animals in a child’s picture book. They are endless and they are empty, but they are as warm with life as the waters of a tropical sea 

We once wrote rather controversially that the Serengeti’s skies make the Big Sky state of Montana’s skies look like Manhattan’s.

 But immense and extra-Montanan they are. Morning clouds so alive with sunlight that they’re almost too bright to look at directly. Soaring afternoon cumulus that seems to brush up against the stratosphere. 

And, of course, the animals, who, when we’re up close and personal with them, seem to be from some fabulous new planet. We’ll reside for a couple of nights at the superb Singita Sasakwa Lodge (Old-world splendor meets casual refinement), high on a bouldery ridge, basking in panoramic views of the prodigious, golden-hued plain.*

As Sasakwa provides guests with a front -row seat to the prolific wildlife in the 350,000-acre Singita Grumeti reserve in the Serengeti 

Another flight–to Arusha with textbook views of the Great Rift (more on that in a moment)

Connect with your flights home and sweetly dream, perhaps, about your next AGAMA  safari.