Serengeti & Ngorongoro, Tanzania

The Great Migration: 1.5 million wildebeest crossing the Mara River (July–Sept) or calving in the south (Jan–Feb).

safariwildlifemigrationluxury

Best time to visit

Month	High	Low	Rain	Season
Jan	28°	16°	75 mm	prime
Feb	29°	17°	54 mm	prime
Mar	29°	17°	82 mm
Apr	27°	16°	101 mm
May	27°	16°	39 mm
Jun	28°	16°	10 mm	prime
Jul	28°	15°	4 mm	prime
Aug	28°	16°	10 mm	prime
Sep	29°	16°	15 mm	prime
Oct	30°	17°	29 mm	prime
Nov	28°	17°	91 mm
Dec	27°	16°	95 mm

30-year averages (1995–2024) from ERA5 reanalysis via Open-Meteo. Rain is the monthly total.

Serves travellers at Budget→Ultra-luxury level. Typically around $500 a day on the ground.

Ranges are typical costs, not quotes. Check the real price before you book.

A 4x4 with a driver-guide, arranged before you arrive. Self-drive is legal but rare and the distances are unforgiving. Nobody walks outside camp except on an organised walking safari with an armed ranger.
getting around · editorial
Kilimanjaro International is the usual arrival, occasionally Arusha. From there it is either a light aircraft to an airstrip inside the park, an hour or two, or a long drive through Ngorongoro to the central Serengeti that eats most of a day on corrugated gravel.
getting there · editorial
The crater rim sits above 2,200 metres and is genuinely cold at dawn, which surprises people who packed for Africa. Distances inside the park are enormous and a game drive is a long day in a seat, not an outing.
know before · editorial
Camps bill to the room and take cards. Carry cash for tips, which are expected for your guide and for camp staff, and for anything bought outside the lodge.
money · editorial
The long rains, roughly March to May, turn the black cotton soil to grease and shut a number of camps entirely. The short rains in November are brief and rarely spoil anything.
when not to go · editorial
Seronera in the central Serengeti has game year-round and the most vehicles. The north, around Kogatende, is where the river crossings happen. Ndutu and the southern plains are for the calving. The Ngorongoro crater rim is cold, high and a separate stop. Mobile camps move with the herds; permanent lodges do not.
where to stay · editorial

Ngorongoro Crater
The rim at two thousand two hundred metres, with the whole crater floor below.
Naabi Hill gate
The southern entrance to the Serengeti, on a lone hill in the middle of the plain.
Seronera
The centre of the park, with the river that holds leopard all year.
Olduvai Gorge
Where Mary Leakey found the footprints. A ravine and three million years.

Eat nyama choma at a roadside place
Eat ugali with stew at a roadside lunch
The everyday dish, and it settles the day.
Drink tea on the crater rim, properly cold
Two thousand metres. Nobody warns you how cold it is.

Be in the Serengeti during the calving season
Go down into the crater as soon as the gate opens
The first hour down there is a different crater.
Spot a leopard in an acacia before anyone points
You will drive straight past several before you do.
Spend a night listening to hyenas circling the camp
They do circle. It is normal and it is not reassuring at all.
Find the great migration
It moves all year. Working out where it is, is the job.
Go up in a balloon over the plain at dawn
It leaves in the dark and lands at breakfast.