Serengeti National Park

The Serengeti’s defining feature is scale — open, largely treeless plains that stretch to the horizon, dotted with the occasional kopje (rocky outcrop) where lions like to rest. That scale is what makes the Great Migration possible: well over a million wildebeest, alongside hundreds of thousands of zebra and gazelle, move through the ecosystem in a broadly circular pattern each year, following the rains and fresh grazing.

The park is large enough to have genuinely different experiences depending on where you go. Seronera, in the centre, has year-round resident wildlife and is a reliable choice whatever the season. The northern Serengeti, near the Mara River, is where the migration’s dramatic river crossings happen, broadly from July to September. The southern plains, bordering the Ngorongoro Conservation Area around Ndutu, are where the migration gathers to calve, broadly from January to March.