Serengeti - Day 2

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Today's drive was awesome -- elephants, cheetah, leopard, lions & some "mini" river crossings.  It did start raining in the afternoon, but we were already on our way back to the camp (and then it really started pouring!).

The Serengeti is the setting for one of the world's greatest natural spectacles:  the Great Migration of herds of over two million wildebeest as well as hundreds of thousands of other hoofed animals (zebras, gazelles, etc.).  Now this event could also be termed the Great Misconception -- as people (including myself) seem to think the migration consists of just a single event (river crossing) or happens over a short timeframe -- in fact, it is a cyclical event that essentially never ends!
  • January - March:  the wildebeest are concentrated in the northern Ngorongoro Conservation Area and souther Serengeti area grazing and calving
  • April - May:  the herds begin to head in a northwest direction in search of green grass and May is generally the beginning of the mating season.  June often finds the herds beginning to concentrate on the wester side of the Grumeti River.  In July & August, the herds continue to move in a northeast direction towards the Mara River and the Kenyan border
  • September - December:  the herds graze in the Maasai Mara in Kenya and then begin to slowly migrate in a southwestern direction back into Tanzania to begin the process again.
Video alert:  this video contains a cheetah eating a gazelle





Location: Serengeti, Tanzania

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