Serengeti National Park

I visited Tanzania for the first time during the summer of 2022! It was an amazing and unique experience. What I will remember is the immensity of the landscape but mostly the wildlife diversity! Anywhere you look you will find animals. Can be birds, snakes or mammals you will have the choice!

My favorite park was the Serengeti and this article is dedicated to it.

Some Serengeti facts:

This park was established in 1951, its superficy is approximately 14,700 km2 !

This park is mostly known for the great migration of over 1.5 million wildebeest but also zebras and other species! Pretty unique. But the Serengeti is also the home of over 70 large mammals and over 500 species of birds!! When visiting the target to see is the big fives: Elephant, Lion, Buffalo, Leopard and the Rhino. If you can see those you can say that you got the ultimate safari experience! Those 5 animals can all be found in the Serengeti, the hardest to see is the Rhino as only 70 individuals remaining in that park. You have more chance to see it in the Ngorongoro Crater.

The Maasai is tribe living near the border of the park and you will often see them on your way to the Serengeti. You can visit them if you want to, on my side it was not in my itinerary.

Overall the Serengeti National park welcome around 350,000 visitors every year.

 

How to visit it:

What is important to know before visiting the Serengeti is: you need to pay to get in – which make sense.  The park close at night, and after 6pm you need to be out except if you sleep in the park (that applies for every parks in Tanzania!). Luckily the Serengeti is a massive park and if you are staying more than one day – which is normal cause that park is huge! – you will find a lodge/tent to sleep in the park.  I actually recommend to do few nights in different part of the park depending of what you want see, the season and also depending on the animals migration!

On my side I stayed in the west and central part of the park. You have different type of lodge available, you have the luxurious one, the middle one in a tent but with a full working shower etc, and a tent with no shower or with one with someone purring water on the other side. Overall wish ever you choose you will have an amazing experience, people are the nicest, always smiling and the surrounding breath taking! At night guards are rounding, and you are not allowed to walk outside on your own. During the night you can hear animals like hyenas, lions, birds or some insects. One morning we saw an hyenas just outside our camp, which make it even more real!

Overall trust your guide, they know best and keep your eyes open because it is a team work!

My experience:

The Serengeti is definitely the most diverse (wildlife) park I’ve ever done ! You see millions of wildebeest and zebras as well as different species of antelope! You can also see the majestic elephant or some of some famous predators like lions, leopard or even cheetahs. I am not even talking about the birds or other insects. You do have some tze-tze flies that can be really annoying but overall it was less that I expected.

There are few moments that will stay forever with me and that park is one of them. Seeing the giraffe family walking during sunset all together, the elephants  protecting their young ones, that leopard on the tree looking for its next pray, or that lion pride finishing dinner so close to us was unbelievable. The cheetahs are pretty rare to see now as they are an endanger species. Compare to other cats cheetahs can’t climb trees or see in the dark which make them really susceptible to danger. I had the chance to see them during a beautiful sunset standing on a termite nest.It was a NatGeo moment!

 

In addition to those animals I was able to see, hippopotamuses, hyenas (more cute than I thought!), flamingos, vultures, crocodiles, antelopes, ostriches and a black mamba!

My time in the Serengeti has been a live National Geographic documentary happening in front of my eyes! Such a gift! This park is magical and Tanzania is respecting and protecting it and it is nice too see!

I was lucky enough to see the big five during our trip and I definitely want to go back, maybe during rainy season or birth season. I will go back to the Serengeti for sure and if you go to Tanzania you should end with that park as you will see 99% of the species to see during a safari.

You can see more of my photographs here

Find my Tanzania video on Youtube