The Serengeti's Great Migration: Nature's Most Spectacular Show

The Great Migration is not a single event but a continuous circuit — 1.5 million wildebeest, 200,000 zebra, and 300,000 Thomson's gazelle moving clockwise through the Serengeti ecosystem in Tanzania and the Masai Mara in Kenya, following the rains and the fresh grass they produce. The circuit covers 1,800 kilometres and takes a full year to complete, which means that the migration is always happening somewhere in the ecosystem.

The river crossings are the most dramatic moments of the migration — the points where the herds must cross the Grumeti and Mara Rivers, which are inhabited by enormous Nile crocodiles that have been waiting for this moment for months. The crossings happen between June and October, when the herds are in the northern Serengeti and the Masai Mara, and the sight of thousands of wildebeest plunging into a crocodile-filled river — the chaos, the noise, the predation — is one of the most intense wildlife experiences on Earth.

The calving season (January to March) in the southern Serengeti is the least-visited but arguably the most extraordinary time to be in the ecosystem. Half a million wildebeest calves are born in a six-week period — a strategy that overwhelms the predators with sheer numbers — and the plains of the Ndutu area are covered with newborns taking their first steps while lions, cheetahs, and hyenas hunt the vulnerable young. The predator activity during calving season is the finest in the Serengeti.

The Serengeti National Park covers 14,763 square kilometres of Tanzania and is one of the oldest and most studied ecosystems in the world. The park's lion population — around 3,000 individuals — is one of the largest in Africa, and the Serengeti lions are famous for their tree-climbing behaviour, which is unusual among African lions. The leopards of the Seronera Valley, where the Seronera River provides year-round water and prey, are among the most reliably seen in Africa.

The Ngorongoro Crater, 180 kilometres east of the Serengeti, is the world's largest intact volcanic caldera — a 260-square-kilometre bowl that contains a self-contained ecosystem of grassland, forest, and lake, with a permanent population of 25,000 large animals including the densest concentration of lions in Africa and one of the last viable black rhino populations in Tanzania. The crater is best visited on a full-day game drive that descends to the crater floor at dawn.

The accommodation options in the Serengeti range from the basic public campsites to the extraordinary mobile camps that follow the migration — luxury tented camps that are dismantled and moved to follow the herds, offering the finest wildlife viewing from the most comfortable base. The Singita Grumeti, the Four Seasons Serengeti, and the Nomad Tanzania camps are among the finest safari accommodations in Africa.

The best time to visit the Serengeti depends on what you want to see. For the river crossings, visit between July and October. For the calving season and the predator activity it generates, visit between January and March. For the best overall game viewing with the fewest tourists, visit in the green season (November to May), when the landscape is lush and the lodges are less crowded. There is no bad time to be in the Serengeti — the ecosystem is extraordinary in every season.

The hot air balloon safari over the Serengeti is one of the finest wildlife experiences in Africa — an hour of floating above the plains at dawn, watching the herds move below and the predators begin their morning hunts, followed by a champagne breakfast in the bush. The balloons launch from the Seronera area and the Kogatende area (for the northern migration), and the combination of the aerial perspective and the silence of the balloon makes it a fundamentally different experience from a game drive.

The Maasai people, who have lived alongside the wildlife of the Serengeti ecosystem for centuries, offer cultural experiences that are among the most authentic in East Africa. The Maasai villages (manyattas) near the park boundaries welcome visitors for guided tours that explain the traditional lifestyle — the cattle herding, the beadwork, the jumping dances — and the income from tourism has become an important supplement to the pastoral economy. The Maasai Mara Cultural Village near the Kenyan border is the finest of these experiences.

Practical tips for the Serengeti: the park entrance fee is $70 per person per day for non-residents, and the fees for the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (which must be crossed to reach the Serengeti from Arusha) are additional. Flying into the Serengeti on one of the scheduled bush flights from Arusha or Kilimanjaro is significantly more comfortable than the eight-hour road journey, and the cost difference is less than it appears when the time saved is factored in. The Serengeti is best combined with the Ngorongoro Crater and the Tarangire National Park for a complete northern Tanzania safari circuit.

The Zanzibar Archipelago, off the coast of Tanzania, is the finest beach destination in East Africa — a group of coral islands with white sand beaches, turquoise water, and the extraordinary Stone Town of Zanzibar City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site of Arab, Indian, and African architecture that was the centre of the East African spice and slave trade for centuries. Combining a Serengeti safari with a week on Zanzibar is the classic East Africa itinerary, and the contrast between the wildlife of the plains and the coral reefs of the Indian Ocean makes it one of the most complete travel experiences in the world.