Serengeti

The Serengeti National Park is comprised of mainly treeless savannah and covers an area roughly the size of Northern Ireland. Its Maasai name is Siringitu, which translates as "the place where the land moves on forever" - an excellent description of its vast rolling plains. It is Tanzania's oldest park and supports the greatest concentration of plains game in Africa.

It is here that you will find the great wildebeest and zebra migration involving more than a million animals, and which cross from the Serengeti in Tanzania to the Maasai Mara in Kenya and back again. The wildebeest can walk up to 1000 km during the total migration averaging about 40 km each day. Here in the Serengeti you may also see the black rhino - once close to extinction, but now making a comeback.

No walking is allowed in the northern parks and game viewing is by closed-sided vehicles only, which is not in its favour. Nor is the fact that, like Kenya's Maasai Mara, it is visited annually by huge numbers of people, [cont]

although, unlike the Mara, its huge size does enable these numbers to be accommodated without spoiling the wildlife experience too much. Planning a worthwhile safari here is an art, but at TanzaniaAway we will do all we can to guide you to choose the right camps at the right time of year, and get the best experience possible.    

So vast is the Serengeti that it is best considered as split into a number of distinct regions: (1) The Northen Serengeti, mercifully far away from the main tourist area; (2) The Central Serengeti, which is where the greatest concentration of game is to be found (and from where you can take your balloon safari); The Southern Serengeti, the perfect place to find lion and cheetah; and (4) The Loliondo Game Controlled Area, where activities such as night drives, and walking are allowed, unlike in the National Park itself.

The Serengeti's big downside is the Tanzanian government's plans to build a major commercial highway in its northern part, cutting right through the wildebeest migratory route. Although it has been reported (July 2011) that these plans have now been dropped, conservationists remain highly dubious.