7-Day Serengeti Western Corridor Migration Safari

We collect you in Arusha and drive to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, arriving at your lodge for lunch. In the afternoon you descend more than 600 metres to the crater floor. Fed by year-round water and grazing, the crater supports wildebeest, zebra, buffalo, eland, warthog, hippo and big old elephant bulls, along with lion, hyena, jackal, cheetah and the harder-to-spot leopard. You also visit Lake Magadi, the shallow soda lake in the south-west of the crater, where flamingos feed.

After breakfast you leave the highlands and drive down onto the plains of the Serengeti, about 145 kilometres and five hours of travel, not counting stops for wildlife. You head for the Seronera area, one of the richest habitats in the park, where the Seronera River supplies water and draws animals from all around. Lunch boxes are packed for the road, and after checking in you go out for an afternoon game drive.

If you would like to see the Serengeti from the air, a sunrise hot-air balloon flight can be arranged at extra cost. After breakfast you spend the whole day game driving. The migrating herds usually pass through this area in May and June, and Seronera is within reach of both the southern plains and the Western Corridor. Resident elephant, buffalo, gazelle, zebra and lion are here all year, and your guide will take you through swamps, woodland and the famous short-grass plains.

After breakfast you drive west into the Western Corridor, a long arm of the park that reaches almost to Lake Victoria, game viewing as you go. You arrive at your camp for lunch and head out again in the afternoon. In a typical year the migration reaches the Western Corridor in June and July, although the timing depends on the rains. Dinner and the night are at your tented camp in the corridor.

A full day in the Western Corridor. The Grumeti and Mbalageti rivers run almost side by side here, each lined with a band of evergreen forest, and they keep zebra, wildebeest, predators and birds in the area all year. The Grumeti is known for its large hippo pods and huge Nile crocodiles, which wait for the herds to cross. In the migration season, wildebeest gather around the waterholes in the middle of the morning in astonishing numbers.

This is a long travel day, so you set off straight after breakfast. The route crosses the whole of the Serengeti and climbs back through the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, with game viewing inside the park and a packed lunch on the way. If time allows, your guide can stop at a Maasai boma in the highlands. You reach Arusha in the evening, where the safari ends at your hotel or chosen address.