Serengeti

The Serengeti is arguably Africa's most iconic national park and one of the planet's greatest wildlife sanctuaries. With its 14,750 km² — roughly the size of Belgium — it occupies north-western Tanzania, extending across the border into Kenya's Maasai Mara to form a transboundary ecosystem of over 30,000 km² known as Serengeti-Mara. The park was created in 1951 and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981, in recognition of its exceptional biodiversity and its role in conserving African megafauna.

The word 'Serengeti' comes from the Maasai siringet, meaning 'endless plain' — and that's exactly it. An immensity of grass savannahs dotted with kopjes (granite outcrops that serve as refuges for lions and observation points for cheetahs) and crossed by a few rivers (Grumeti to the west, Mara to the north, Seronera in the centre). The park divides into several zones: the south (Ndutu and Salei plains, annual birthplace of the wildebeest), the centre (Seronera region, rich in leopards and resident lions), the western corridor (Western Corridor, followed by the migration between May and July), the north (Mara River region, theatre of the crossings July to October), and the north-east (Lobo, more wooded, resident wildlife year-round).

The event that makes the Serengeti unique in the world is the Great Migration. Each year, around 1.5 million wildebeest, 250,000 zebras and 350,000 gazelles travel a great annual circuit of about 800 km within the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, searching for fresh grass and water. The cycle is consistent and predictable: birth in the south in January-February (500,000 young born in 3 weeks), migration to the north-west between March and June (with Grumeti River crossings in June), arrival in the northern Serengeti in July, dramatic Mara River crossings between July and October (wildebeest attacked by Nile crocodiles, scenes among the most powerful in the animal kingdom), descent south in November-December. This migration is the largest annual movement of terrestrial mammals in the world.

But the Serengeti is not just about migration. The park shelters intact megafauna: around 4,000 lions (one of the largest populations in the world), 1,000 leopards, 250 cheetahs, 7,000 spotted hyenas, 5,000 elephants, 60,000 buffalo, plus 70 mammal species and 500 bird species in total. Lion density in Seronera (centre of the park) is among the highest in the world — you're practically guaranteed to see them on every drive.