Tanzania | Serengeti | wildebeest crossing
Serengeti National Park (15,000km2) is the oldest and most popular park in Tanzania, and perhaps also the most famous park in the world. Enticing green grasslands result in an annual northwards migration of more than a million wildebeest, 200,000 zebra and 300,000 Thomson's gazelle. These animals are followed closely be a huge number of lions and leopards. What results is a spectacle of unparalleled proportions; it's with good reason that UNESCO has added Serengeti National Park to the World Heritage List.
Serengeti is a Masai word meaning 'endless plains'. The Serengeti is a savannah measuring 60,000km2 on the border between Tanzania and Kenya. In Kenya, it forms part of Masai Mara National Park and in Tanzania it covers not only Serengeti National Park, but also Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Maswa Game Reserve, and the nature reserves of Loliondo, Grumeti and Ikorongo.
Serengeti National Park has been a national park since 1951 and listed as a World Heritage area since 1981. The park is famed for its wildebeest migration to southern Kenya: in the dry season, around July, 1 million wildebeest (gnus), 200,000 zebra and 300,000 Thomson's gazelle proceed northwards from the Serengeti in a 40-kilometre-train and to an age-old rhythm that has been passed down through their genes. They cross the Grumeti River in search of green grass, but many of the animals are devoured by crocodiles that lie in wait in the water. Nevertheless and even though the one-and-a-half million animals are also hunted by animals of prey, their numbers rarely shrink. The wildebeest, zebra and Thomson gazelle return southwards to the Serengeti at the beginning of October.
There is nowhere else in Africa that has so many and such a wide variety of game in the low season than Serengeti National Park: large herds of buffalo, smaller groups of giraffe and elephant and many thousands of Grant's gazelle, eland, impala, kongoni and topi. It's a true banquet for the animals of prey, which include lions, leopards, cheetahs, jackals and hyenas.
The reptile, insect and bird worlds of Serengeti National Park are also very impressive. More than 500 bird species have been identified in the park, including extremely large ostrich and the very distinctive Secretary Bird.
The variety of the landscape is also astonishing. You'll not experience the overwhelming sense of space that a savannah provides anywhere else. At the start of the rainy season, the sun-burnt grass plain transforms into a rich carpet of flowers. Besides savannah, the Serengeti also has termite hills, dusty acacia forests, tree-covered hills and winding rivers alongside which fig trees grow. Serengeti National Park borders Victoria Lake in the west.
