SERENGETI NATIONAL PARK

Tanzania’s oldest and most popular national park, also a world heritage site and recently proclaimed a 7th 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 Thomson’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.

But there is more to Serengeti than large mammals. Gaudy agama lizards and rock hyraxes scuffle aroundthe surfaces of the park’s isolated granitecopies. A full 100 varieties of dung beetle have been recorded, as have 500- plus birdspecies, ranging from the out sized 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 characterizes the Serengeti Plains, stretching across sunburn 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. And there are also wooded hills and towering termite mounds, rivers lined with fig trees and acacia woodland stained orange by dust.

Popular the Serengeti might be, but it remains so vast that you may be the only human audience when a pride of lions masterminds a siege, focused unswervingly on its next meal.