The Serengeti is the most famous safari park in the world and the word “safari” is mostly associated with it and with Masai Mara, which is the same park, only on the Kenyan side.
For general information on Tanzania, read this link.
The Serengeti is home to millions of animals, most are herbivores, but there are also thousands of lions, leopards, cheetahs and other predators. Which ones exactly you can see find here https://www.safaribookings.com/serengeti/wildlife.
The great migration and crossing of the Mara River also takes place in Serengeti. It is the most famous event in the safari world. To see all of that, you have to spend a minimum of 3 nights in the park, which is quite expensive. However, if we ever come here again, we will spend 3 or more nights.
During our first safari we spent here one night, but we were satisfied and saw a lot of interesting things. You can get lucky at any time of day, but we found the safari to be most interesting early in the morning.
On the way to the park you will see numerous Maasai settlements. The road, as you can guess, is unpaved and not very good. From Ngorongoro gate, where the asphalt ends, it takes about 2 hours to drive.
The country's authorities forcibly relocated all the tribes that used to live on the territory of the park and made a buffer zone tens of kilometers wide. Although, given the number of tourists and camps, it is not quite clear why Maasai were the problem. Unless they were hunting animals.
After the buffer zone, tourists are taken to the hill (-2.832028, 34.998083), where there is a picnic area, a toilet and a kiosk with drinks and snacks. And the safari begins after the hill.
In many places the ground looks burned out, and in some places it's burning right now. These are controlled burns, to renew vegetation and to move groups of animals.
If you come to the park for one night, as we did, you will spend most of your time driving through the vast badlands of the southern Serengeti. They are not particularly scenic, but there are occasional large rocks and stones where animals can hide.
We saw a pride with lion cubs, first in the distance, and then found the same or some other one close by. Curiously, lion cubs drink milk from all lionesses in a row.
Here (-2.455778, 34.802111) there are hundreds of hippos lying in the pond. At night they come out of the water and go for a walk, one even passed near our tent, it was a bit scary.
Several dozens of balloons rise into the sky above the Serengeti at this time. Interesting option of safari, but the prices are inadequate - $600 per person, and this is for a basket for 20 people! We flew on balloons already 5 times and everywhere it cost 5-7 times cheaper.
About an hour later, we saw another leopard in a tree. After the previous day we were not very enthusiastic about it, but by the look on our guide's face realized that something interesting was going to happen.
We drove very close, but he did not pay any attention to us. By the way, our guide was the first to notice the hunt, reported it on the radio and another car of the same company arrived, there were no more lucky ones.
For about 3-4 minutes the leopard was sneaking through the grass and at some point we couldn't see him anymore, although he was literally 10 meters away.
We were explained that the leopard waits for the moment when the victim turns the head to the side and then attacks. At this point I realized that for such scenes you need more than one good camera, because you want to take both photos and video, and it is impossible for one person to do this.
In the evening, in the camp, we met an Irishman and a Frenchwoman who were in the second car, and they told us that they were very afraid of the hunting scene and almost cried.
We prepared our children before the safari, explained that there are predators who eat other animals and feed their cubs. As a result, our kids really enjoyed the hunt, they were thrilled.
This scene was the highlight of our safari, the guide said that he sees something like this once a year.
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