Serengeti, Tanzania

 Serengeti is probably one of the most well-known safari destinations in Africa. It has been awarded the best national parks in the world multiple times and it is known to be the place to witness the greatest wildlife show on earth, the Great Wildebeest Migration.

                                                

With more than a million animals living on this virgin savanna covering more than 15,000,000 hectares (37,000,000 acres) across the northwestern part of Tanzania, there is no better place to go on a safari than here.

Within this travel guide, you will find all the information you need to help you plan out a safari trip of a lifetime in Serengeti National Park including a suggested itinerary, a guide on how to pick the right safari tours, and so much more.

Tarangire National Park

The first place on safari trip is Tarangire National Park, a great park to begin your journey where you will be able to learn a bit more about wildlife behaviors, how to track them, and what kind of protocol you should follow while you are doing a game drive.

Tarangire National Park is named after the Tarangire river that runs across the park. The place is known for its abundance of Baobab trees, long-live alien-looking massive trees that are native to Africa and Australia.

Tarangire National Park is also known for its high density of elephants many of them often congregate along the river. You will also see a ton of zebras, wildebeests, water buffalos, and other species scattered around the park.

                                       

There are also more than 550 bird species living in the park, making it a great place for bird-watching. There are also predators like lions, leopards, and cheetahs, but we only saw a few lion cubs on a tree so they must be pretty rare here.

Your safari tour should arrive at the park before midday and they will take you on a game drive the entire afternoon with a lunch break at a lake viewpoint inside the park. Watch out for the monkeys there. They love stealing tourist food.

Serengeti National Park

Serengeti National Park is pretty far but along the way, you will be passing through Ngorongoro Crater and you will be able to see some really beautiful mountain sceneries as well as several Maasai settlements as we enter their territory.

The road from Ngorongoro Crater to Serengeti and even once you are inside is extremely rugged and dusty, and without a single shade around, it can get pretty hot in the jeep so do prepare.

Once you arrive, you will find yourself in the middle of an expansive plain, so large you can not see its boundaries. The Maasai people called this place Serengeti which means an endless plain, a fitting name for such vastness.

With such an expansive and unobstructed terrain, you can easily spot all kinds of animals on both sides of the road all scattered throughout the plain from impalas to zebras, and if you are lucky, you might find a family of lions resting under the few trees they have here.

The terrain in Serengeti is great for hunting and so you will find many lions and cheetahs here, although seeing them on the hunt is not as easy as these predators are not known to be very active, and you will often find them resting most of the time.

Spending a night inside Serengeti is another highlight of the trip. You will be hearing all kinds of animals at night from elephants roaring to hyenas howling.

After a night in Serengeti National Park, you will be woken up at sunrise where you will then be ushered off on an early morning game drive, which is the best time to see rare animals as they are most active during this time.

In the early morning, you might also be able to see some hot air balloons dotting the sky. If you are there during the Great Wildebeest Migration, you are going to want to go up the hot air balloon.

Ngorongoro Crater

                                                      

Ngorongoro Crater is a large volcanic caldera formed by volcanic activities millions of years ago. What makes Ngorongoro Crater so special is how rich the vegetation the crater floor is, which is not so common for a volcanic caldera.

When the volcano erupted, it collapsed onto itself creating a large floor as deep as 600 m (2,000 ft) and covering over 260 square km (100 square ml). Due to this collapse, a stream nearby was drained into the lake at the center of the crater creating a condition where animals can strive.

In the early morning, you will again be woken up extremely early to begin a morning game drive down in the crater. Your guide will take you on a winding road down to the crater floor where you will be able to see tons and tons of animals congregating around the lake.

What makes a game drive in Ngorongoro Crater so special is the fact that the terrain there is completely different from the one you saw in Serengeti or Tarangire.

In Serengeti, there are a lot of animals but they are often scattered out and it is not so easy to see them in big groups unlike in Ngorongoro Crater where all the animals are gathered around the lake in a boundary you can actually see.

Lake Manyara

                                         

Lake Manyara is another national park that you can visit as part of your safari tour. It is like Tarangire National Park with an ecosystem outside of Serengeti, but more forestry, and you will see more baboons and other monkeys here than any other places you've been to.

You will spend the first half of the day driving around the lake and you will encounter a ton of baboons and blue monkeys on the get-go. They are known to congregate around the forest area leading up to the lake as well as elephants and all kinds of birds.

Since the area is so foresty, you won't find as many predators here as in Serengeti due to all the trees obstructing the view. There might be some lions and leopards here but they are often up in the trees, resting, or looking for animals to hunt which makes them harder to spot.

When To Visit Serengeti, Tanzania

The best time to visit Serengeti is in the dry season from late June to late October where animals often congregate around water holes, making them much easier to track down and spot. Not to mention, there are fewer mosquitoes during the dry season which will help reduce the chance of you contracting malaria.

That said, it can also be quite crowded during that time and most safari companies will jack up the price to meet the demand which can be pretty expensive.

Visiting Serengeti between out of the peak season can be a unique experience if you don't mind the sporadic rain. Between November to May, the scenery will be lusher with more greens all around. The rains are often short except between March and May and you will find Serengeti to be much quieter and cheaper than if you travel between June and October.

All in all, you can pretty much visit Serengeti all year round. Each season in Serengeti has its own pros and cons and it all comes down to what you want to see in Serengeti.