The Great Migration, Serengeti

The Great Migration

The Great Migration is the largest herd movement of animals on our planet, with up to 1,000 animals per km², the wildebeest can be seen from space.

Over 1.2 million wildebeest and thousands of zebra, as well as topi and other gazelles cycle through the Serengeti-Mara searching for grass and water. Pure survival instinct, leads each wildebeest to travel 800 to 1,000 km on its journey along their migration routes. Hungry predators such as lion, leopard, cheetah, hyena, wild dog and crocs happily take advantage of this migration along the way.

The journey takes them from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in the south of the Serengeti in Tanzania, up through the Serengeti and across into the Masai Mara in Kenya and then back again.

We are here to witness some of the migration and it is fascinating! It's not the crazy river crossings, but still spectacular

Pictures cannot decribe how awe-inspiring and even oddly emotional I found it, to see wildebeest with a mix of animals everywhere! At first we see hundreds, and then thousands of wildebeest migrating accross the land.

The plethora of animals makes for easy pickings for the wild cats. During our morning drive we are treated to a sighting of a couple lions. We heard the roaring lion at night and then saw the mating pair relaxing under the trees. The female was laying on her back with her legs up helping the sperm migrate to where they need to go.

Later, our sundowner (enjoying a relaxing beverage somewhere where you can enjoy the stunning African Sunsets), takes place in a field watching a cheetah stalk its prey.

There are antelope off in the near distance so we park where we feel we can view a chase should one take place. The cheetah seems to have a routine. Sit up and watch, slowly get a little closer, lay down, roll around and play a little, repeat.

We enjoy good drinks and conversation while we watch and wait until the sun sets and we have to head back to camp. As we leave we see a hyena come in which means the potential for a chase has passed.

With hyenas around the cheetahs won't bother with a chase as they know the hyenas will just come and take it, so why bother.

Back at camp we decide its time call it a night and start heading to our tent. Even though we are supose to be escorted to our tents at night, we are in tent number 1 close to the main area, so figure we can just use our cell phone flashlights to walk back. The guides however disagree and someone walks us with a much stronger light. As it turns out our phone lights would not have surficed, as the larger light highlighted a big eland grazing right in front of our tent long before our phones would have shone on him. An eland is the largest of the antelope family, and he was a big boy!