Serengeti National Park

Size: 14,763 sq km (about 9,000 sq miles).

Location: 335 km (about208 miles) from Arusha, stretching north to Kenya and bordering Lake Victoria to the west.

Getting here: Charter flights from Arusha, Lake Manyara and Mwanza. Drive from Arusha, Lake Manyara, Tarangire or Ngorongoro Crater.

To do: Hot air balloon safaris, Maasai rock paintings and musical rocks. Visit neighboring Ngorongoro Crater, Olduvai Gorge, Ol Doiny Lengai volcano and Lake Natron's flamingos.

Best time: To follow the wildebeest migration, December-July. To see predators, June-October.

Accommodation: 4 lodges, 4 luxury tented camps and camp sites scattered through the park; 1 luxury camp, a lodge and 2 tented camps just outside.

Map

NOTE: The route and timing of the wildebeest migration is unpredictable. Allow at least 3 days to be assured of seeing them on your visit – longer if you want to see the main predators as well.

A million wildebeest… each driven by the same ancient rhythm, fulfilling their instinctive role in the inescapable cycle of life: a frenzied 3 week bout of territorial conquests and mating; survival of the fittest as 40 kilometer long columns plunge through crocodile infested waters on the annual exodus north; replenishing the species in a brief population explosion that produces more than 8000 calves a day before the 1000 kilometer pilgrimage begins again.

More than 6 million hooves pound the legendary plains of the Serengeti. Every year, triggered by the rains, more than a million wildebeest, 200,000 zebra and 300,000 Thomson’s gazelle gather to undertake the long trek to new grazing lands. Tanzania’s first and most famous park, the Serengeti, is renowned for its wealth of leopard and lion. The vast reaches of the park help the black rhino to fight extinction and provide a protecting breeding ground for the vulnerable cheetah. Witness predator versus prey and the fundamental interdependence of the Serengeti’s abundant species, from more than 500 varieties of bird to 100 types of dung beetle.

The Serengeti is a sense of seeing to the ends of the earth, the sunburnt savannah shimmering to the horizon. Yet, after the rains this golden horizon is magically transformed into an endless green carpet flecked with wildflowers. But there are also wooded hills, towering termite mounds and rocky kopjes, rivers lined with elegant stands of fig trees, ebony and acacia, stained orange by dust. It is so vast you may be the only human audience when a pride of lions masterminds a siege, focused unswervingly on their next meal.