Tanzania Motorcycle Tour

Ten nights around Kilimanjaro and on Zanzibar, guided, on a Royal Enfield Himalayan, with the island half spent on the Indian Ocean.

Riding a motorcycle on the savannah among antelope and zebra is the kind of thing most people assume is not possible, and it is the reason this tour exists rather than a 4×4 safari.

Arusha opens it with three nights in a Bauhaus-style villa. The riding then circles Africa’s highest mountain on dusty off-road tracks, with hidden oases, lakes and waterfalls breaking up the distance and African lodges at the end of each afternoon. Arusha National Park supplies a safari day among wildebeest, giraffe and zebra, and Lake Natron follows, a soda lake where flamingos, pelicans and marabou storks gather in numbers. A flight then reaches Zanzibar, where the bikes come out again for the island and its turquoise coast, with Stone Town and its layers of Arab, Persian, Indian and European building, and a final evening on a catamaran watching the sun go down.

Three nights in the Arusha villa, three in African lodges, three at an oceanfront Zanzibar resort and one in Stone Town are included with the riding and the guiding; the operator rates the difficulty three out of five. Mid-February is the departure, in the short dry spell between the rains. No wildlife sighting can be promised, on the savannah or at Natron. Eleven days split between dust and ocean is a well-balanced shape, and the Zanzibar half is not filler: the island has its own roads worth riding. The operator’s page gives ten nights against the nine recorded here, which needs reconciling.