Serengeti National Park

Serengeti National Park covers roughly 14,750 square kilometres of northern Tanzania, and its Maasai name — siringet, "the place where the land runs on forever" — is a fair description of the short-grass plains at its heart. The park is best known for the annual wildebeest migration, in which well over a million wildebeest and a few hundred thousand zebra move in a broad clockwise circuit through the ecosystem: calving on the southern plains around Ndutu between January and March, pushing north-west through the Grumeti in the middle of the year, and crossing the Mara River in the far north between roughly July and October. The migration is a moving target rather than a fixed event, so where you stay matters as much as when you come. Away from the herds, the Seronera valley in the centre holds resident lion, leopard and cheetah year-round, and the park's kopjes, riverine woodland and acacia savannah support a full complement of plains game and more than 500 recorded bird species.