Mammal Syncerus caffer
The Big Five’s heavyweight. Herds of several hundred are a daily sight in Arusha National Park and the crater.
Buffalo are the most numerous of the Big Five and, in Arusha National Park, often the first big animal you meet. Big herds graze the Ngurdoto Crater floor and the Momella Lakes, with oxpeckers and cattle egrets riding along.
In the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti the herds can run to a thousand animals. The old lone bulls, caked in mud, are the ones to watch respectfully from a distance.
Arusha National Park, the Ngorongoro Crater floor and the Serengeti woodlands.
Guide’s tipOld bulls that have left the herd rest in thick cover and dislike surprises. We always give them space.
Sightings are never guaranteed: these are wild animals in wild places. What we can promise is a guide who knows where to look.
Destinations
The parks and reserves where our guides look for it, each with its own best season and safaris.
Montane forest, the Momella Lakes and Hartlaub’s Turaco, just 45 minutes from Arusha.
Huge elephant herds, ancient baobabs and Tanzania’s endemic birds.
Tree-climbing lions, groundwater forest and a soda lake full of waterbirds.
A volcanic caldera with black rhino, lions and big grassland birds.
Vast plains, the Great Migration and big cats all year round.
Tanzania’s largest park: big predators, baobab plains and 570+ bird species.
Keep exploring
Loxodonta africana
Tarangire’s big herds are the classic sight: families drifting between baobabs to the river in the dry season.
Panthera leo
The Serengeti holds one of the largest lion populations left in Africa. Prides of twenty are not unusual.
Panthera pardus
Secretive and beautiful. The Seronera valley’s sausage trees are the best place in Africa to find one by day.
Acinonyx jubatus
Built for the short grass plains. Watch one scan from a termite mound in the southern Serengeti.
Diceros bicornis
Critically endangered and closely guarded. The Ngorongoro Crater is the most reliable place in Tanzania to see one.
Giraffa tippelskirchi
Tanzania’s national animal, with jagged star-shaped patches. Common almost everywhere except inside the crater.
Equus quagga
The migration’s other half. Hundreds of thousands of zebra move with the wildebeest across the Serengeti.
Connochaetes taurinus
The Great Migration itself: 1.5 million animals circling the Serengeti, calving in the south each February.
Tell us your dates and the birds or animals you most want to see. We’ll reply within 24 hours with a route and a full quote.
