Accommodation in Tanzania

Tanzania holds the largest wildlife spectacle left on earth and one of the oldest trading coasts in the Indian Ocean, and most trips take both. The northern circuit runs from Arusha through Tarangire and the Ngorongoro Crater into the Serengeti, where close to two million wildebeest and zebra move in a continuous loop across the plains and into the Masai Mara and back. The southern and western parks, Ruaha and Nyerere, are far emptier and better for anyone who has done a first safari already. Then there is Zanzibar and the Swahili coast, which is where almost everyone finishes.

The migration is not a single event, it is a year. Calving is on the short-grass plains of the southern Serengeti and Ndutu from about January to March, when hundreds of thousands of calves drop inside a few weeks and the predators gather. The Grumeti and Mara river crossings, the images everyone knows, happen in the north from roughly July to October. Between those, the herds are simply somewhere on the way.

June to October is the dry season and the peak. The long rains fall from March to May, when many camps close and prices drop hardest. The coast is warm all year and best from June to October and again in January and February.