Serengeti National Park

The Serengeti is Tanzania's most famous national park, an almost 15,000 square kilometer expanse of open savanna that gives the park its Maasai name — "endless plains." It is home to the largest concentration of plains game left on Earth, and the stage for the Great Migration, the annual movement of over 1.5 million wildebeest and hundreds of thousands of zebra across the ecosystem.

Even outside migration season, the Serengeti holds resident populations of lion, leopard, cheetah, elephant, and giraffe year-round, particularly around the Seronera River system in the park's central Seronera Valley — one of the most reliable game-viewing areas in Africa in any month.

Best time to visit: the Serengeti rewards visitors year-round, though June-October (dry season) offers the easiest game viewing, while December-March is calving season on the southern plains near Ndutu, with exceptional predator action.