Serengeti National Park

Serengeti National Park lies in northern Tanzania and forms the core of a much larger ecosystem that continues north into Kenya's Maasai Mara and south-east into the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The park itself covers roughly 14,750 square kilometres and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981. The name comes from the Maasai word for an endless plain, and the southern and eastern sectors live up to it: treeless grassland broken only by kopjes, the rocky outcrops that lions and leopards use as lookouts.

The ecosystem is defined by the Great Migration, in which well over a million wildebeest, together with large numbers of zebra and gazelle, move in a broad annual loop following rainfall and fresh grass. Calving takes place on the southern plains around Ndutu from roughly late January to March, the herds move north-west through the Western Corridor in the long rains, and from July to October they reach the northern Serengeti and the Mara River, where the dramatic crossings happen. By November and December they drift back south. The timing shifts each year with the rains, and no crossing can be guaranteed.

Safaris are vehicle-based. Visitors stay in permanent lodges or seasonal mobile camps and go out in closed or open-sided 4x4s with roof hatches; off-road driving is not permitted inside the national park, so sightings are worked from the track network. Full-day drives with a packed lunch are the norm for photographers, because the best light is at the edges of the day and the central Seronera area can be busy mid-morning. Hot-air balloon flights operate at dawn in several sectors.

Photographically the Serengeti rewards patience with cats rather than a sightings checklist. Lions are plentiful and often relaxed around vehicles, cheetahs hunt on the open plains where a chase can be followed in the frame, and leopards use the sausage trees and river lines around Seronera. Dust, backlight and heat haze are the constant technical challenges; a bean bag on the window ledge is the usual support, and a 400–600 mm zoom covers most situations from a vehicle.