INCA Announces New & Exclusive Serengeti Journey

  • June 14, 2016
INCA Announces New & Exclusive Serengeti Journey
With INCA - newest journey, Secrets of the Serengeti, guests will have exceptionally intimate experiences including foraging with the nomadic Hadza, hiking and sharing stories with the Maasai and walking in the Serengeti Wilderness Area accessible to few visitors. On this exclusive 17-day wildlife and walking safari (February 10 to 26, 2017), INCA guests will enjoy chance encounters with wildlife that are not possible on the usual lodge-and-vehicle safaris.

Highlights of INCA's program include:

  • Four days walking in the Serengeti Wilderness Area led by Richard Beatty, who is OBE and Honorary Consul in Arusha. This is a special-permit area with no lodges and vehicular traffic

  • Three days with the Hadza, one of Africa's last hunter-gatherer societies, learning archery and accompanying a hunt

  • Three days walking with the pastoral Maasai, who are famed as warriors, to visit their village and local school and attend a traditional dance


While there are many high points on INCA's Serengeti journey, walking in the Serengeti Wilderness could well be the most rewarding. Guests head out with Richard Beatty and an armed guide into untracked bush that has rarely been visited in the past 50 years. This is Africa as it was a hundred years ago, unmarred by game-viewing tracks, lodges or groups of vehicles. During these days of leisurely walks, guests will immerse themselves in the life of the bush, enjoy picnics and return to their mobile camp for the night.

With the greatest concentration of plains game in Africa, the Serengeti National Park hosts the planet's most magnificent wildlife spectacle as one million wildebeest, 300,000 Thomson's gazelle, 200,000 zebras and hundreds of thousands of other plains game migrate south and then north within its 14,700 square miles. Elusive leopards watch from acacia trees. Here, cheetahs prowl, while golden-maned lions feast on stragglers.

Encompassing three stunning volcanic craters up to 2,000 feet deep and huge expanses of savannah, bush and forest, the 3,200-square-mile Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority is the only place on earth where man and wild animals co-exist in harmony. More than 30,000 large mammals live here including 7,000 wildebeests, 4,000 zebras, 3,000 eland and 3,000 Grant's and Thomson's gazelles. Guests will see lions, black rhinos, elephants, leopards, buffalo, hyenas, jackals, cheetahs, rare wild dogs and more than 500 species of birds.

INCA's' journey starts with a visit to Tarangire National Park where herds of up to 300 elephants will thrill guests, as will oryx, gerenuk, hartebeest, Kori Bustard, the world's heaviest flying bird and the world's largest, the ostrich. Next is a visit to Lake Manyara National Park to view the famed tree-climbing lions and thousands of pink flamingos.

Days spent walking with the nomadic Hadza people will give a sense of life as it was thousands of years ago. Guests can accompany a hunt, forage for berries and try their hand at archery. A joyous people, the Hadza often end the day with dancing and singing. In journeying into Maasai territory, a local chief welcomes guests to his village, explains daily life and leads walks into the bush. A visit to the village primary school shows Maasai children are eager to learn. In the evening, young Maasai men dance, show how high they can jump and invite guests to join in.

Accommodations are in comfortable lodges and authentic tented camps, and several, such as the Hadza and Pembezoni Camps, move seasonally. The Serengeti Wilderness Camp is relocated each day by the staff while INCA guests are out walking.

INCA's new 17-day Secrets of the Serengeti walking safari starts at $22,495 per person for two guests; $17,995 for four to five and $14,995 for eight guest. Included are private charter flights from Serengeti Wilderness Area and Kilimanjaro International Airport; all accommodations in luxury and award-winning tented camps and lodges as noted; all meals, soft drinks, wine and beer; all guides, park fees, activities, tours and sightseeing arrangements as specified in itinerary, and roundtrip airport transfers between Kilimanjaro International Airport and Arusha Coffee Lodge (when arriving on the KLM flight from Amsterdam). Not included are: international airfares; optional hot-air balloon ride in the Serengeti; airport taxes and fees; visas; tips for guides; excess baggage charges, or other items of a personal nature.

For further information, contact INCA or call 1-510-420-1550.