Arguably the most amazing safari destination on the planet, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area continues to draw more than half a million visitors to its wild climbs each year. Famed as one of the best places to spot the fabled African ‘Big Five’, it also touts a formidable wealth of other large mammal life that have flourished between the looming hills of the Ngorongoro Crater, an extinct and ancient volcanic caldera that has been incubating the region’s animal life for millennia.

Today, Ngorongoro Conservation Area tour guides can recommend a whole host of luxury lodges and eco safari accommodations that lurk on the peripheries of the great crater. These form the perfect base for game drives into the park, to spy out the booming population of crater lions, the wandering gazelle herds, or the formidable hook-lipped rhinos at their watering holes. Elsewhere, cheetahs gather around the waters of Ndutu Lake, colossal swathes of wildebeest hammer the ground during the annual migration, and some of the earliest human relics known to man pepper the dusty ridges of the Olduvai Gorge.