The Serengeti's Great Migration: Nature's Most Spectacular Show

The Great Migration is not a single event but a continuous circuit — 1.5 million wildebeest, 200,000 zebra, and 300,000 Thomson's gazelle moving clockwise through the Serengeti ecosystem in Tanzania and the Masai Mara in Kenya, following the rains and the fresh grass they produce. The circuit covers 1,800 kilometres and takes a full year to complete, which means that the migration is always happening somewhere in the ecosystem.

The river crossings are the most dramatic moments of the migration — the points where the herds must cross the Grumeti and Mara Rivers, which are inhabited by enormous Nile crocodiles that have been waiting for this moment for months. The crossings happen between June and October, when the herds are in the northern Serengeti and the Masai Mara, and the sight of thousands of wildebeest plunging into a crocodile-filled river — the chaos, the noise, the predation — is one of the most intense wildlife experiences on Earth.

The calving season (January to March) in the southern Serengeti is the least-visited but arguably the most extraordinary time to be in the ecosystem. Half a million wildebeest calves are born in a six-week period — a strategy that overwhelms the predators with sheer numbers — and the plains of the Ndutu area are covered with newborns taking their first steps while lions, cheetahs, and hyenas hunt the vulnerable young. The predator activity during calving season is the finest in the Serengeti.

The Serengeti National Park covers 14,763 square kilometres of Tanzania and is one of the oldest and most studied ecosystems in the world. The park's lion population — around 3,000 individuals — is one of the largest in Africa, and the Serengeti lions are famous for their tree-climbing behaviour, which is unusual among African lions. The leopards of the Seronera Valley, where the Seronera River provides year-round water and prey, are among the most reliably seen in Africa.

The Ngorongoro Crater, 180 kilometres east of the Serengeti, is the world's largest intact volcanic caldera — a 260-square-kilometre bowl that contains a self-contained ecosystem of grassland, forest, and lake, with a permanent population of 25,000 large animals including the densest concentration of lions in Africa and one of the last viable black rhino populations in Tanzania. The crater is best visited on a full-day game drive that descends to the crater floor at dawn.

The accommodation options in the Serengeti range from the basic public campsites to the extraordinary mobile camps that follow the migration — luxury tented camps that are dismantled and moved to follow the herds, offering the finest wildlife viewing from the most comfortable base. The Singita Grumeti, the Four Seasons Serengeti, and the Nomad Tanzania camps are among the finest safari accommodations in Africa.

The best time to visit the Serengeti depends on what you want to see. For the river crossings, visit between July and October. For the calving season and the predator activity it generates, visit between January and March. For the best overall game viewing with the fewest tourists, visit in the green season (November to May), when the landscape is lush and the lodges are less crowded. There is no bad time to be in the Serengeti — the ecosystem is extraordinary in every season.