Serengeti National Park

The Serengeti offers arguably the most dazzling game viewing in Africa
The park lives up to its ancient Maasai name ‘Siringet’, meaning ‘endless open plains’. The landscape is of mesmerizing beauty. While a sizeable part of the park is made up of seasonally flooded plains, forest and shrub savannah, the Serengeti is mostly about one thing: grass. Golden in the dry season, green and dotted with wildflowers after the rains. It has perfectly adapted to continuous grazing, turning the Serengeti into heaven for large herbivores. Every now and then kopjes 2,5 billion-year old rocky outcrops interrupt the infinite horizon.

This is where the most breath-taking phenomenon of the planet takes place: the great migration. Undisputed star of the show is the gnu antelope, or wildebeest, meaning ‘wild cattle’ in Afrikaans. Each year in February, a few months before the start of the exodus north, hundreds of thousands of calves are born in a couple of weeks. Many of them are almost immediately chased by eagerly waiting cheetahs, leopards and prides of lion, but there is no appetite big enough to devour 15,000 new-borns on peak days.

Even apart from the migrating wildebeest, zebra and gazelle, the Serengeti offers arguably the most dazzling game viewing in Africa. Being surrounded by millions of wildebeest, zebra and gazelle is a phenomenon you will never forget. In their annual migration north, they stampede over open plains, plunge into rivers almost as if they are possessed and are endlessly chased by predators. The Serengeti is a World Heritage Site, biosphere reserve and one of the New Seven Wonders of Africa.

The extensive birdlife adds to the magic of an early morning game drive: this is the time when their concert is at its most varied. All the essential species of northern Tanzania, plus endemic ones are present, adding up to 520 species.
The route and timing of the wildebeest migration is unpredictable. Allow at least three days to be assured of seeing them on your visit and extend your stay if you would like to see the main predators as well. You stand the best chance of seeing the migration between November and May.