Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania offers a spectacular volcanic crater teeming with diverse wildlife, dramatic landscapes and rich Maasai culture, making it one of Africa's most rewarding and accessible safari destinations for travellers seeking unforgettable encounters with nature.
Tanzania: Serengeti National Park
🦓 Off to the Serengeti
We’d pencilled in a couple of days for exploring the Serengeti, which, if you’ve never bothered looking at a map of Tanzania, is an absolute whopper of a place, something in the region of 14,750 square kilometres of it, give or take a paddock, which works out roughly the size of Northern Ireland, only with considerably more lions wandering about and a great deal fewer pubs to duck into when the weather turns. The name itself comes down to us from the Maasai language, from the word “siringet,” which translates roughly as the place where the land runs on forever, and once you’re actually standing there gawping at it, you quickly realise this isn’t some fanciful bit of tourist-board poetry, it’s a perfectly accurate description of what’s stretched out in front of your eyes. We’d done a bit of reading before we set off, the way you do when you’re the sort of person who likes to know what they’re looking at, and discovered the place had originally been designated a game reserve back in 1929 under British colonial administration, well before it became a properly constituted national park in 1951. Mrs H pointed out that made it older than her own father, which rather put the scale of the place into perspective for both of us.
🐃 Through the Gate and Into Wildebeest Country
We rolled up to the main gate of the Serengeti National Park during the middle of the afternoon, which left us a decent window to squeeze in a short game drive before the light started to go. Now, the thing you really need to get your head around with this whole stretch of East Africa is that the Serengeti and the Maasai Mara, just the other side of the border up in Kenya, aren’t two separate places at all, not as far as the wildlife is concerned anyway. They function as one enormous, seamlessly interconnected ecosystem that the animals treat as a single estate, completely indifferent to whatever line some colonial cartographer happened to draw across the middle of it a century ago. Every single year, something in the order of one and a half million wildebeest, together with several hundred thousand zebra and gazelle besides, plod their way round this vast natural circuit chasing fresh grass and water, a migration that’s been carrying on, more or less unaltered, since long before anybody thought to put up a border post anywhere near it. We’d already had a passing glimpse of some wildebeest back over in the Mara, but nothing remotely close to what greeted us once we’d pushed on into the Northern Serengeti proper. They were absolutely everywhere you cared to look, stretched out to the horizon in every direction, as though somebody had tipped out an enormous crate of the things across the entire landscape. We trundled along at a gentle pace, stopping here and there whenever something caught our eye, and our driver eventually took us down towards the Mara River itself, just to see whether any of these great brown hordes might fancy attempting a crossing that particular afternoon. As it turned out, not a single one of them did. They all looked thoroughly unbothered by both the river and us, so we gave it up as a bad job and pointed the Land Cruiser back towards camp for the evening.
🏕️ Settling In at Kati Kati Tented Camp
Our billet for the night was the Kati Kati Tented Camp, which turned out to be arranged as two separate little clusters of accommodation, twelve tents to each cluster, every cluster boasting its own dining tent where the whole party gathered together for meals come evening. These mobile bush camps are a tradition that stretches back decades in East African safari tourism, the basic idea being that the entire operation can be packed up and shifted lock, stock and barrel according to wherever the great migration happens to be passing through at any given point in the year, which when you stop and think about it is rather a clever way of doing business, following the animals about rather than sitting there hopefully waiting for them to come to you. Because the whole camp is seasonal in nature, regularly dismantled and reassembled elsewhere, everything inside felt noticeably more rustic and pared-back than the places we’d stopped at on previous legs of the trip, though that suited the two of us just fine, we certainly hadn’t travelled all this way in search of room service and turn-down chocolates. By the time we’d actually arrived it was getting on rather late, so we ordered up a shower straight away, and this is where things get genuinely interesting if you’ve never had the pleasure of the bucket-shower routine. Staff bring round hot water and tip it carefully into a bucket rigged up somewhere above the tent canvas, and once you’re inside, you give a small lever a tug and the water comes through rather magically, like some Heath Robinson contraption knocked together with bits of string and good intentions out here in the bush. What neither of us cottoned on to straight away was that there was a chap standing patiently just outside the entire time, quietly topping up the hot water supply as it ran low, and we only became aware of his presence when he offered a cheerful “okay” through the canvas wall. Gave the both of us a proper start, I don’t mind telling you, standing there starkers being silently attended to from somewhere out in the darkness.
🦁 A Night of Grunts, Groans and One Very Loud Zebra
That previous night had not, by any stretch of the imagination, been what you’d call a restful one. Once the storm had finally blown itself out and the skies cleared, the animals came creeping in close around the camp, and through the small hours I lay there listening to the wildebeest shuffling about and producing the most peculiar grunting racket directly outside our tent, sounding for all the world like a herd of disgruntled old men who’d gathered specifically to complain about something or other. I did rather wish a passing lion would turn up and send the whole lot of them scarpering off into the night, purely in the interests of a bit of peace and quiet for the rest of us trying to sleep. The absolute crowning glory came at somewhere around four o’clock in the morning, when a zebra positioned somewhere nearby decided this was the perfect moment to start braying like a donkey with a serious grievance against the world, which struck me as a thoroughly undignified sound for a creature that otherwise looks so smartly turned out in its stripes. Fortunately for us, we’d already got a sunrise game drive booked in for that morning regardless, so being unceremoniously hauled out of bed at an ungodly hour wasn’t quite the hardship it might otherwise have proven to be under different circumstances.
🌊 Patience by the Mara River
The plan for that particular day was to mooch about the same general patch of the Northern Serengeti we’d already explored, before pushing further south the following morning to take in the Southern Serengeti as a separate adventure entirely. We left Kati Kati behind and made our way back down towards the Mara River once more, because what we were really and truly after this time was a proper crossing, ideally one involving a sizeable herd of wildebeest, this being the great set-piece moment of the whole migration spectacle that everybody’s seen splashed across the telly at some point or another. Actually getting one of these celebrated crossings to happen, though, is very much a game of patience mixed liberally with a fair bit of cat and mouse, and the whole affair is played out entirely on the wildebeest’s own terms, not ours. They gather along the riverbanks in considerable numbers, particularly during the mornings and the early afternoons, building up steadily until either something tips the balance and the entire herd plunges into the water together as one, or alternatively nothing whatsoever happens and they simply wander off elsewhere to do something else instead, leaving everyone who’s been sitting there patiently for the best part of an hour feeling rather short-changed for their trouble. This is precisely the bit where you have to dig in, switch the engine off, and wait it out properly, because there really is no telling in advance which way the whole thing is going to go.
🐊 The Crossing, the Crocodile, and the Mad Dash
Word eventually reached us that a decent-sized herd had gathered on the bank of the Mara, so off we went at a fair old pace, keen not to miss whatever might be brewing. The Mara River itself is one of the genuine geographical stars of this whole migration story, rising up in Kenya’s Mau Forest before snaking its way south across the border and through both the Mara and the Serengeti, and it’s precisely these crossing points, treacherous, crocodile-infested and entirely unpredictable, that have made the whole spectacle so famous on wildlife documentaries the world over. By the time we’d actually arrived, something like twenty-five other vehicles had already parked themselves up, all sitting roughly 200 metres back from the water’s edge, and arrayed in front of them was a gathering of perhaps a thousand wildebeest, every one of them looking thoroughly relaxed about the whole business of standing about doing very little. So the waiting game began in earnest, the way it does. We sat there for the best part of an hour with absolutely nothing happening whatsoever, and then, without much in the way of advance warning, the first wildebeest plunged abruptly down the steep bank and straight into the river, and the entire place erupted in an instant. Every vehicle that had been parked there so patiently suddenly took off towards the riverbank at a fair old lick, which was exhilarating and slightly alarming in roughly equal measure, rather like the opening dash of a bank holiday car boot sale the moment the gates swing open. By the time we’d managed to get ourselves into position, the assembled vehicles were jammed nose to tail in one solid unbroken line, and it genuinely wasn’t obvious to anybody where on earth the wildebeest were actually meant to come through all of us. Sure enough, a fresh batch appeared at the very top of the bank, took one long look at this entire wall of safari vehicles blocking their path, and simply stood there looking utterly baffled, quite unable to find a gap anywhere. We, along with several other drivers, had to shuffle smartly out of the way to clear a proper path through, which took us the best part of a minute or two of careful reversing and repositioning before we got ourselves settled to watch the remainder of the spectacle unfold. While all this commotion was going on, we spotted a crocodile sliding purposefully through the water towards the line of crossing animals, and we watched on, half fascinated and half wincing on the poor wildebeests’ behalf, as it had a couple of determined goes at grabbing one of them. Nile crocodiles in this stretch of river can grow to a genuinely formidable size, well over five metres in some documented cases, and they’ve learned over countless generations to lie in wait at precisely these crossing points, timing their attacks to coincide with the migration’s annual passage. It missed clean on its first attempt, came back round for a second try that caused a fair bit of panic and frantic splashing among the herd, and still came away empty-jawed, with absolutely nothing to show for either attempt. Within about fifteen minutes of the very first animal taking the plunge, the whole drama had run its course, calm had been restored across the river, and the wildebeest who’d successfully made it across to the far bank were grazing away contentedly as though nothing remotely dramatic had just unfolded mere minutes earlier.
🐘 Elephants Join the Party
Gradually the other vehicles began peeling off one by one in search of fresh entertainment elsewhere, and we did much the same ourselves before too long. After cruising along for half an hour or thereabouts, mostly following the meandering line of the river, we hadn’t spotted anything else especially worth stopping for, until a small family group of elephants appeared up ahead, babies and all included, ambling unhurriedly towards the water’s edge. Elephant herds tend to be led by an old, experienced matriarch who carries decades of accumulated knowledge about safe crossing points and feeding grounds passed down through the generations, and it’s generally her judgement the rest of the family follows when it comes to a decision as significant as fording a river with youngsters in tow. Our driver had a hunch that they too might be planning a crossing of their own, so we got ourselves into a sensible position to watch, and sure enough, over they went without any great fuss, the babies sandwiched safely in the middle of the group the whole way across. It wasn’t quite the high theatre of the wildebeest crossing we’d just witnessed, no lurking crocodiles this time, no almighty pile-up of competing vehicles, but it was still a thoroughly lovely thing to have had the privilege of watching, elephants simply being elephants, calm, measured and entirely unhurried about the whole affair, going about their business as if the rest of us weren’t even there.
🦅 Vultures at Work
We carried on driving through the park and before long stumbled across the carcass of some unfortunate animal being thoroughly worked over by a substantial gathering of vultures and assorted other carrion-feeders, marabou storks prominently among them, all going about the rather unglamorous but genuinely essential job that scavengers have always performed in this particular ecosystem, recycling what’s been left behind by the predators and quietly keeping the whole natural show ticking over as it has done for millennia.
🌳 A Pit Stop in the Shade
By this point it was creeping up towards lunchtime, so we made our way towards a stand of trees, this particular part of the Serengeti being rather more wooded and vegetated than the wide-open plains we’d been driving through earlier that morning. Finding a decent bit of shade wasn’t remotely difficult given the abundance of cover about. First order of business, quite naturally, was to “check the tyre on the back of the Land Cruiser,” which, for the uninitiated among you reading this, is the standard polite safari euphemism for nipping off discreetly behind a convenient bush for a pee, before we got down properly to the rather more serious business of tackling our packed lunch.
🐆 A Sleepy Cheetah in the Heat
After we’d finished eating, we pushed on back towards the same gate we’d originally come through the previous day, and along the way ran straight into a sizeable knot of other game drive vehicles all parked up together in one spot. Pulling in alongside to see what all the fuss was about, we discovered everyone was watching a single cheetah who’d taken shelter from the worst of the midday heat beneath the spreading branches of a tree, looking thoroughly unbothered and faintly bored by the size of her gathered audience. Cheetahs are unusual among the Serengeti’s big cats in that they hunt almost entirely by day, relying on raw speed rather than the cover of darkness, which means the cooler hours of early morning and late afternoon are when they’re typically active, and the blazing heat of midday is generally reserved for exactly this sort of unhurried loafing in whatever patch of shade happens to be available. After a few minutes of lazy stretching, she eventually got herself up, had a good shake, and wandered off into the long grass, at which point we decided we’d seen everything there was to see and followed suit ourselves shortly after.
🛣️ Heading South
From there we turned south and headed back into the park proper, ready to begin the following day’s game drive from an entirely fresh starting point further along the circuit. We were booked into a different branch of the Kati Kati Tented Camp this time round, one that looked identical in every visible respect to the one we’d just left behind, except, mercifully for our sleep, this time there wasn’t a chorus of grunting wildebeest and braying zebra camped directly outside our canvas to keep the pair of us up half the night again.
🌄 Into the Heart of the Serengeti
It was now time to push on into the central Serengeti before our route eventually carried us further still towards the Ngorongoro Crater. We woke to a properly chilly morning at the Kati Kati camp, got ourselves dressed in something of a hurry against the cold, and headed straight over to join our guide Ezekiel for breakfast, sensing already, even at that early hour, that we had a genuinely long but thoroughly interesting day stretched out ahead of us. The central plains of the Serengeti, sometimes referred to by guides as the Seronera region, are widely regarded as the most reliable area in the whole park for spotting big cats year-round, since a permanent population of resident lions and leopards stays put here regardless of where the migratory herds happen to have wandered off to, making it something of a safari guide’s favourite stretch of road whatever the season.
🦛 Hippos in the Golden Light
Our very first port of call that morning was a modest little pond where half a dozen hippos were happily wallowing about in the shallows, entirely content with their lot. The morning light was still soft and golden at that particular hour, bathing the whole pond in a warm yellow glow that was, frankly, absolutely perfect for both admiring the hippos at leisure and getting a few decent photographs into the bargain. Hippos spend the great bulk of their daylight hours submerged like this, conserving energy and keeping their famously sensitive skin protected from the sun, only emerging properly at night to graze on land, which is precisely why an early morning sighting like ours tends to be the best chance of catching them out and about and reasonably alert rather than simply dozing with their nostrils poking above the waterline. Ezekiel had clearly clocked our growing enthusiasm for these enormous, ungainly creatures, because he announced he knew of a considerably bigger gathering of them a little further along, so off we trundled in pursuit, bouncing along a rutted track that wound its way past termite mounds taller than the Land Cruiser itself. En route we passed a substantial cluster of other game drive vehicles all parked up together, and pulling alongside to see precisely what they were watching, we found ourselves looking at a genuinely impressive pride of lions, perhaps some 400 metres off the road, made up of adult males, lionesses and a generous scattering of cubs besides, more than twenty animals in total by our own rough count from a distance. They were far too distant for the naked eye to do them justice, so out came the binoculars and the telephoto lens for a proper look.
🦛💨 The Big Pod (and the Smell to Match)
True to his word, Ezekiel delivered us to a stretch of river holding a genuinely enormous pod, somewhere in the region of fifty hippos all packed in cheek by jowl, snorting, grumbling, and, it has to be said in the spirit of honesty, breaking wind with quite remarkable and unselfconscious enthusiasm. The water itself did not look, nor indeed smell, in the slightest bit inviting to anybody downwind of it. A sight on this scale naturally draws a crowd, and before too long there was quite a gathering of fellow tourists clustered alongside us, all jostling for the same view. It’s worth remembering, amid all the excited photo-taking, that hippos are genuinely one of the single most dangerous animals on the entire African continent, responsible for considerably more human deaths each year than lions and elephants put together, a sobering statistic that the clearly posted warning signs around the waterhole were doing their level best to convey to anybody who cared to read them. The danger comes partly from their sheer size and surprising speed on land despite that ungainly appearance, and partly from their famously short temper when they feel cornered or when a boat or a curious tourist strays too close to a mother and her calf. Despite this, a fair number of visitors seemed thoroughly determined to push straight past those signs regardless and get themselves that bit closer, purely in pursuit of the perfect shot to show off to the folks back home on Instagram.
🐊 Crocodiles Join the Mix
After we’d had our fill of hippos for one morning, we drove on deeper into the park and came across yet another waterhole, this one shared rather uneasily between hippos and crocodiles together in the same patch of water. This particular pod seemed considerably less content with their crowded and overlapping living arrangements than the previous lot had been, and several short, sharp bursts of aggression flared up between the hippos as they jostled and shoved one another for the best remaining spots in the shrinking pool. The crocodiles, by contrast, appeared to take none of it personally whatsoever, drifting about with that characteristic air of patient indifference they seem to manage regardless of how much chaos is unfolding immediately around them, content to bide their time until something easier presented itself.
🌾 The Endless Plains
The Maasai people christened this whole vast expanse Serengeti, meaning the endless plains, and having stood there ourselves looking out across the full sweep of it, we can happily confirm that the name earns its keep entirely. Vast, rolling stretches of savannah grass simply roll away from you until they vanish completely into the heat haze sitting along the distant horizon, and there’s something genuinely humbling about standing in a landscape this enormous, where the curve of the land seems to go on regardless of which way you happen to be facing. The whole place positively teems with wildlife of every description: during the great migration these same plains fill to absolute bursting point with wildebeest by the hundred thousand, but even well outside of that particular season there’s antelope and zebra scattered about in pretty much every direction you care to look. All of which, taken together, makes it an absolutely prime hunting ground for the resident big cats, lions, leopards and cheetahs chief among them, and as the miles steadily rolled by beneath our wheels, we were fortunate enough to get a good, close look at all three varieties in turn, each one going about its business in its own characteristic style, the lions lazing, the leopards lurking, and the cheetahs forever on the alert for that next burst of speed. I’ll happily admit to being especially chuffed at getting a proper, unhurried eyeful of a couple of leopards together with a cheetah at genuinely close range. Without question one of the standout highlights of the entire trip for both of us.
🏞️ The Serengeti in Numbers
The Serengeti National Park carries full World Heritage Site status and is absolutely stuffed to the gills with wildlife of every conceivable kind: somewhere over two million ungulates by current estimates, around 4,000 resident lions, roughly 1,000 leopards prowling about somewhere in the undergrowth, something like 550 cheetahs, and a quite staggering 500 or so different bird species, the whole lot squeezed into an area covering close to 15,000 square kilometres of protected land, an area considerably bigger than the whole of Wales if you want a comparison closer to home. Its formal UNESCO listing dates all the way back to 1981, when the relevant United Nations delegates gathered together in Stockholm and duly put their signatures to the necessary paperwork, though in truth the area had already been recognised by scientists as something rather special as far back as the late 1950s, when the earliest serious ecological surveys conducted out here began revealing just how interconnected, dynamic and finely balanced the whole sprawling system genuinely was, decades before the wider world caught up with that idea. The German explorer and big-game hunter Oskar Baumann is generally credited as the first European to set eyes on the place, back in 1892, though the Maasai had of course been living alongside and herding their cattle around its margins for many centuries before any European ever turned up with a notebook. Wander its endless plains, dotted as they are with scattered acacia trees and the distinctive rocky outcrops the locals know as kopjes, and you’ll routinely find lions surveying their territory from atop the rocks like minor royalty inspecting the estate, the Great Migration thundering noisily through in its proper season, and, if you’re sufficiently patient and a touch lucky into the bargain, the odd elusive leopard tucked away discreetly in the riverine forest along the watercourses.
🦓 The Great Cycle
These days, the overwhelming majority of people who make this particular journey out here arrive with one single thing fixed firmly in mind: to witness millions of wildebeest, alongside their travelling companions of zebra, gazelle and eland, embarked on their relentless annual trek in search of fresh water and decent grazing across the whole ecosystem. This entire cyclical movement is governed, year in and year out, by rainfall patterns and by the shifting nutrient content of the grass itself, the animals essentially following the rain around the entire ecosystem on an annual loop that simply cannot be replicated anywhere else on the planet in quite the same way. Unlike a great many of the world’s other celebrated wildlife reserves, which tend to be fenced off in order to keep the animals and the surrounding human population firmly apart from one another, the Serengeti is carefully protected yet deliberately left entirely unfenced, giving its resident wildlife all the room they genuinely need to complete a migratory journey that, by all credible scientific accounts, they’ve been undertaking in more or less identical fashion for literally millions of years before any of us turned up to watch.
Planning Your Visit to the Serengeti
| 📍 Location | Serengeti ecosystem, Mara & Simiyu Regions, northern Tanzania |
| 🕖 Opening Times / 🌐 Website | Daily, 6:00 AM – 6:00 PM | serengeti.go.tz |
| 📞 Phone / 📧 Email | +255 28 262 1515 | info@tanzaniaparks.go.tz |
| ✈️ Nearest Airport | Seronera Airstrip (within the park); also Kilimanjaro International Airport (for international connections) |
| 🚗 By Road | Arusha to Seronera Gate via Ngorongoro Crater Highlands route, roughly 325 km, 6–7 hours by 4×4 |
| ℹ️ Notes | Best visited May–October for the wildebeest migration; park entry permits valid for 24 hours; 4×4 vehicle recommended |
🎟️ Entry Fees
| Category | Adults (Non-Resident) | Children (5–15 yrs) | Vehicle Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fee | $70 per 24 hrs | $20 per 24 hrs | $40 (non-resident vehicle) |
🧭 Getting There
Most visitors fly into Kilimanjaro International Airport or Arusha Airport, then either take a scheduled light aircraft to one of the Serengeti’s airstrips (such as Seronera, Grumeti, or Kogatende) or travel overland by 4×4 safari vehicle via Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The overland route from Arusha typically takes 6–7 hours, while flying in takes around 1–1.5 hours. Self-drive is possible but a sturdy 4×4 with high clearance is essential due to unpaved roads.
The Best Time to Visit the Serengeti National Park
☀️ Long Dry Season (June to October)
This is widely considered the main dry season and the best time for game viewing in Tanzania, also offering the best chance to see the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti. Afternoon temperatures usually sit between 20°C and 30°C, with most days bringing fine, clear skies and sunny weather. Nights, especially at altitude, turn distinctly chilly. August and September are particularly good for catching the Mara River wildebeest crossings in the northern Serengeti. It’s also the most popular time to climb Kilimanjaro, with stable, dry conditions making for safer trekking. The trade-off is cost and crowds, as this is high season across most parks.
What to pack: lightweight, neutral-coloured clothing for daytime layered with a warm fleece or jumper for cold mornings and evenings, a packable waterproof jacket just in case, sturdy walking boots, a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses, high-factor sun cream, binoculars, a head torch, and a daypack for game drives.
🌦️ Short Rains (November to December)
The short rains arrive in November and December and are often unpredictable, but they have far less impact on a safari than the long rains, since rain tends to fall in short, heavy bursts during the afternoon rather than all day. This is a lovely, lush, and noticeably quieter time to travel, with the return of migratory birds making it a strong choice for birdwatchers. Temperatures stay warm, generally in the high twenties during the day, dipping into the mid-teens overnight, with humidity creeping up but rarely becoming uncomfortable.
What to pack: breathable, quick-drying clothing, a compact umbrella or lightweight rain jacket, waterproof footwear or boots that can cope with mud, a light cardigan for cooler evenings, insect repellent, a dry bag or waterproof cover for cameras and electronics, and binoculars for birdwatching.
🌤️ Short Dry Season (January to February)
A brief dry spell falls between the two rainy seasons, particularly across northern and coastal areas, making this an underrated window for travel. It’s especially prized by wildlife enthusiasts, as this is the most reliable time to witness wildebeest calving on the southern Serengeti plains, which in turn draws large numbers of predators. Days are generally warm and dry, though brief showers can still occur, and Zanzibar’s beaches are at their best.
What to pack: light, breathable clothing, swimwear and beach cover-ups if combining with Zanzibar, sun cream and a hat, a light rain shell just in case, comfortable walking shoes, and a camera with a good zoom for calving-season action.
🌧️ Long Rains (March to May)
This is the wettest and quietest stretch of the year. April is typically the wettest month, bringing high humidity, while May remains very rainy, with afternoon downpours common. Many lodges in the southern and western parks close during this period, and travel can be disrupted in low-lying areas. On the upside, this is when landscapes turn richly green, prices drop substantially, and crowds all but disappear, while birdwatching remains excellent as migratory species linger in the region.
What to pack: fully waterproof outerwear and footwear, quick-drying layers, a daypack with a rain cover, a strong insect repellent, plastic bags or dry sacks to protect electronics and documents, and a flexible itinerary in mind given possible road or lodge closures.
Overall Best Time to Visit
Taking everything together, June to October stands out as the overall best time to visit Tanzania for most travellers. This long dry season delivers the most reliable weather, the clearest skies, the easiest wildlife viewing as animals concentrate around dwindling water sources, and the best conditions for both Kilimanjaro climbs and Zanzibar beach time. The trade-off is that it’s also peak season, meaning higher prices and busier parks. For those seeking better value, fewer crowds, and who don’t mind a chance of rain, the short dry season of January and February offers an excellent alternative, particularly for witnessing the wildebeest calving. Ultimately, the right season depends on individual priorities, whether that’s guaranteed sunshine, lower costs, lush scenery, or a specific wildlife spectacle, but for a first-time visit with the broadest appeal, the dry season from June to October remains the gold standard.
Visiting Tanzania in January – February
There is a chance of rain, the temperature is getting higher and the humidity is building. It’s still a good time to go as rates are lower and safari is excellent. At this time of year the migration herds are in the southeast of the Serengeti for calving season, so the Ndutu Plains are busy but it is amazing to see so many animals in one place.
Events & Festivals- Green Season (November to March): Tanzania’s Green Season offers superb birdwatching opportunities, with migratory birds arriving in their thousands.
- Green Season (November to March): Tanzania’s Green Season offers superb birdwatching opportunities, with migratory birds arriving in their thousands.
- Green Season (November to March): Tanzania’s Green Season offers superb birdwatching opportunities, with migratory birds arriving in their thousands.
- The best chance to observe herds of animals in their hundreds as they cross Tanzania’s rivers on their epic journey across the continent is as part of the Great Migration in Africa.
- The best chance to observe herds of animals in their hundreds as they cross Tanzania’s rivers on their epic journey across the continent is as part of the Great Migration in Africa.
- The best chance to observe herds of animals in their hundreds as they cross Tanzania’s rivers on their epic journey across the continent is as part of the Great Migration in Africa.
- Green Season (November to March): Tanzania’s Green Season offers superb birdwatching opportunities, with migratory birds arriving in their thousands.
- Green Season (November to March): Tanzania’s Green Season offers superb birdwatching opportunities, with migratory birds arriving in their thousands.
Visiting Tanzania in February – February
Migration is still occurring in Ndutu. The weather is hot and humid with a chance of rain.
Events & Festivals
Visiting Tanzania in March
Migrating herds are starting to leave Ndutu, heading west toward Grumeti. This is truly low season, before the heavy rains but with humidity building. Great rates can be taken advantage of at this time of year.
Visiting Tanzania in April – May
This is a period of heavy rain, so we would advise against travelling at this time.
Visiting Tanzania in June
This is the green season, bringing lush grasses and bush that can make spotting game more difficult. However, this is still a wonderful time to travel — particularly for bird watchers as parks are full of migratory birds; especially in the south. Migration should be in the Grumeti area of the Serengeti heading north.
Visiting Tanzania in July
This is the start of the peak season. The Migration is in the north of the Serengeti moving toward Kenya, and elephant start to gather in Tarangire. The land is getting drier and spotting game is becoming easier. Temperatures are in the high 20°Cs to early 30°Cs and the humidity is low.
Visiting Tanzania in August
Peak season. Migration is still in the north. As the land becomes more parched, the animals’ behaviour becomes more predictable. The dense bush in Ruaha is drying out so game spotting here becomes much easier.
Visiting Visiting Tanzania in September
Peak season. The end of the migration is still in the north, with herds on both sides of the Kenya and Tanzania borders and high numbers of elephant in Tarangire. The northern circuit can be very busy, but it is less busy in the south, so for those who want to avoid crowds it’s best to visit the southern parks.
Visiting Visiting September in October
Peak season. The migration is now in Kenya, but the game viewing in central Serengeti is still very good. Southern parks are particularly rewarding at this time of year.
Visiting Visiting Tanzania in November
Short rains. This is a great time to take advantage of low season rates and is still a popular time to travel. The rains tend to be overnight, but there is a risk of rain during the day as well. Migrating herds are starting to travel south from Kenya, so crossings can be seen in the north of the Serengeti.
Visiting Visiting Tanzania in December
There is a chance of rain, but this is generally overnight. Temperatures and humidity start to build. Safari is good, with migrating herds in the north travelling south to Ndutu. The festive season can be very busy and needs to be planned well in advance to ensure availability.
Kati Kati Tented Camp
⛺ Life at Kati Kati Tented Camp
There’s certainly no shortage of places to bed down for the night around the wider Serengeti area, but we’d specifically booked ourselves into Kati Kati Tented Camp, which forms part of a wider hotel group operating various lodges and tented camps right across the whole of Tanzania. What genuinely sets these particular camps apart from the competition is that they’re entirely non-permanent in nature, pitched right in the very heart of the Serengeti itself, and routinely dismantled and moved on according to the season, rather than being fixed, permanent concrete affairs that the local wildlife simply has to put up with sitting there, unmoving, year-round regardless of where the herds happen to be.
🛏️ Glamping, Not Camping
Each individual camp keeps things deliberately modest, just a small handful of tents in total, but don’t let the word “tent” put you off the idea for a single moment, this is proper glamping through and through rather than anything involving a leaky two-man job dragged out of the loft from a camping shop back home. Every single tent comes fully ensuite, the showers running on that bucket system we’ve already described at some length, basic in design but perfectly serviceable in practice, and each tent looks straight out across the sweeping Serengeti landscape, with a couple of comfortable chairs set up just outside so you can sit there of an evening and watch the sun go down properly, drink in hand if you’ve had the foresight to plan ahead and pack accordingly.
🍽️ Dinner Under Canvas
There’s one large communal tent set permanently aside for meals across the whole camp, and the food on offer, frankly, was genuinely excellent throughout our stay, with a proper, thoughtfully prepared vegetarian option laid on at every single meal without exception, which is rather more than can honestly be said for some of the other places we’ve stayed at over the years on our various travels together.
🔥 Round the Campfire
Each evening they get a decent fire pit roaring away nicely, with comfortable seating arranged all around the outside of it, and it proved to be a thoroughly good spot indeed for swapping stories and travel tales with the other guests passing through the camp at the same time as us.
🚶 Mind How You Go After Dark
One thing genuinely worth flagging up here is that these particular camps sit out in completely open bush with no fencing whatsoever surrounding them, which means that once darkness has properly fallen you absolutely don’t simply wander back to your own tent unaccompanied on your own. A member of staff escorts you there and back again every single time, torch in hand, and for very good reason indeed, given everything we’ve already described above about precisely what’s roaming around freely out there once the sun has well and truly gone down for the night.
More to Explore
