Serengeti National Park

Gazetted in 1951 and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981, the Serengeti covers 14,763 square kilometres of northern Tanzania, stretching from the Ngorongoro highlands to the Kenyan border, where it joins the Maasai Mara. Its name comes from the Maasai siringet, "the place where the land runs on forever", and the short-grass plains of the south do exactly that.

The park is best known for the Great Migration: more than 1.5 million wildebeest and around 250,000 zebra move in a roughly 800-kilometre annual loop, calving on the southern plains between December and March and running the gauntlet of the Grumeti and Mara river crossings from June to October. The Serengeti also holds one of Africa's largest lion populations — over 3,000 — alongside leopard, cheetah, spotted hyena and healthy numbers of elephant and buffalo. Game viewing is by vehicle year-round, with hot-air balloon safaris over the plains a signature add-on.