The park lies between latitudes1° 28’ and 3° 17’ S and between longitudes 33° 50’ and 35° 20’ E and has an area of 14,763 sq km (5,700 sq miles). The park is located 335km (208 miles) from Arusha, stretching north to Kenya and bordering Lake Victoria to the west. The National Park was established in 1951.
Although thousands of writers have used the power of pen, to put down their ideas on paper, in many different ways about the Serengeti National Park, their work may be summed up in a few words only; “From the wildlife point of view, Serengeti is the most unique area in the world”. Serengeti a name that seems to conjure up all is wildest in wildest Africa is Tanzania’s oldest and most popular national park, also a World Heritage Site and recently proclaimed a World Wide Wonder.The Serengeti is famed for its annual migration, when some six million hooves pound the open plains, as more than 200,000 zebra and 300,000 Thompson’s gazelle join the wildebeest’s trek for fresh grazing. Yet even when the migration is quiet, the Serengeti offers arguably the most scintillating game-viewing in Africa: great herds of buffalo, smaller groups of elephant and giraffe, and thousands upon thousands of eland, topi, kongoni, impala and Grant’s gazelle.
The spectacle of predator versus prey dominates Tanzania’s greatest park. Golden-maned lion prides feast on the abundance of plain grazers. Solitary leopards haunt the acacia trees lining the Seronera River, while a high density of cheetahs prowls the southeastern plains. Almost uniquely, all three African jackal species occur here, alongside the spotted hyena and a host of more elusive small predators, ranging from the insectivorous aardwolf to the beautiful serval cat.
But there is more to Serengeti than large mammals. Gaudy agama lizards and rock hyraxes scuffle around the surfaces of the park’s isolated granite kopjes. A full 100 varieties of dung beetle have been recorded, as 500-plus bird species, ranging from the outsized ostrich and bizarre secretary bird of the open grassland, to the black eagles that soar effortlessly above the Lobo Hills.
As enduring as the game-viewing is the liberating sense of space that characterises the Serengeti Plains, stretching across sunburnt savannah to a shimmering golden horizon at the end of the earth. Yet, after the rains, this golden expanse of grass is transformed into an endless green carpet flecked with wildflowers.
