Serengeti National Park

It’s hard to describe the Serengeti National Park without descending into cliché – the so-called ‘endless plains’, with their miles of waving yellow grass undulating away towards the horizon’s distant hills, are one of Africa’s most photographed and written about sights. Unlike many famous locations, however, the Serengeti really does live up to the hype.

Many people have a lifetime ambition to visit the Serengeti at the time of the so-called Great Migration, when herds of zebra, wildebeest and other herbivores move en masse from one part of the park to another in search of fresh grazing. In fact the migration is not a one-off event, but a year-round continuous cycle of movement as the great herds eat their way steadily from one area to the next, moving in a roughly clockwise direction from the south to the north and back south again. The migration begins every year on the short-grass plains of the Southern Serengeti, when the short rains are newly over and the grass is lush and plentiful. It is at this time of the year that wildebeest choose to breed, dropping their calves in January and February when nourishment is abundant.

As the short grass plains begin to run out of grazing, the herds form into great lowing masses of frantic animals, the wildebeest lowing wildly and bucking as they run in circles, the air heavy with the dust kicked up by their hoofs. Zebras join the melee, their frantic high-pitched whinnies adding to the din as they lunge fearfully towards rivers and pools, desperate with thirst but half crazed with fear of the giant crocodiles lurking with deceptive languor in the shallows. The southern Serengeti at this time has an almost apocalyptic quality, as vultures perch in dead trees, lion roll in the shade with distended bellies, and the smoke from distant grass fires turns the air black.

Suddenly, as if in response to an unheard starting gun, the herds form into single file and with one accord set off northwards, plodding along unseen tracks etched into their primitive brains for thousands of years. There’s no apparent leader or set route, but inexorably the million animals that make up the migration move on, shadowed as ever by slouching lion and scampering hyena, and leaving behind only cropped brown grasses and bleached bones.

The migration’s next drama happens in the far north-west, where the Mara river demarcates the border between Tanzania and Kenya. Here, the steep banks of the river form a natural barrier between the herds and the long, sweet grasses of the western Grumeti plains. Desperate for foods, the animals line the banks, running in circles and making tentative forays into the river, only to be driven back by the sight of lurking Nile crocodiles, some of the biggest reptiles in the world. Eventually, hunger wins over fear, and the herds plunge en masse into the water, their hides slippery with water and sweat, noses held above water and eyes rolling white back into their sockets. Many succumb to the snapping jaws of the crocs, but the majority make it across and have a few months of respite before the need to move on again.