The Serengeti National Park is a vast plain In 1913 Stewart Edward White, an American hunter, set out from Nairobi. Pushing south, he recorded: "We walked for miles over burnt out country... Then I saw the green trees of the river, walked two miles more and found myself in paradise." He had found Serengeti.
The Maasai, who had grazed their cattle on the vast grassy plains for millennia had always thought so. To them it was Siringitu - "the place where the land moves on forever."
The Serengeti region encompasses the Serengeti National Park itself, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Maswa Game Reserve, the Loliondo, Grumeti and Ikorongo Controlled Areas and the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. Over 90,000 tourists visit the Park each year. Two World Heritage Sites and two Biosphere Reserves have been established within the 30,000 km² region. The Serengeti ecosystem is one of the oldest on earth. The essential features of climate, vegetation and fauna have barely changed in the past million years. Early man himself made an appearance in Olduvai Gorge about two million years ago. Some patterns of life, death, adaptation and migration are as old as the hills themselves.
Some of the Serengeti's largest buffalo herds are to be found in the pristine woodlands to the north and elephants abound in this area too. For excellent year round game viewing the Seronera valley in the centre of the park has abundant grazing and considerable numbers of animals including giraffes, warthogs, reedbucks and many other species that sustain resident leopards and large prides of lions.
In the south is the saline Lake Ndutu, which attracts throngs of flamingos and in the west the Grumeti River, contains some of the largest Nile crocodiles you will ever see. Just before entering the park from the South is the Olduvai Gorge (also known as the cradle of mankind).
The migration
It is the migration for which Serengeti National Park is perhaps most famous. Over a million wildebeest and about 200,000 zebras are constantly on the move. So strong is the ancient instinct to move that no drought, gorge or crocodile infested river can hold them back.
Large concentrations of animals revolve around the extremities of the park in a clockwise direction, in the months of January, February and March they are around Lake Ndutu to the South-East they then move up into the Western corridor in May June and July and up to the North in the months from August through to October, then down the Eastern side of the park from October to December.
The migration will only really affect your safari in the Serengeti. Here we organise different safaris according to the time of year.
In the Seronera, the heart of the Serengeti, there are always animals and large concentrations of predators and we visit all year around. When visiting other areas of the park we try to predict the movements of the animals and our safaris are designed to use the lodges when they are at their best. Going to these outer camps and the wrong time of year can be a disappointing experience.
The patterns are irregular however and another way to get close to the animals is in our private tented camps where you can choose a site in function of the migration.
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Northern Tanzania Safari 
