Corners in the Serengeti

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The Serengeti has probably been the subject of more books and television documentaries than any other African game reserve, while the annual wildebeest migration across its grassy plains - arguably the world's greatest wildlife spectacle - is a defining image of East Africa.

But documentaries don't tell the whole story. No more than one-third of the Serengeti comprises open grassland, and the wildebeest migration is but one feature - albeit the most extraordinary - of a savanna fauna as diverse as any of the continent.

On a recent visit to the Serengeti, we were fortunate to be able to explore the 'other' two-thirds of the national park: the spectacular Lobo Hills in the north and the un trammeled woodland of the Western Corridor. Both areas support a rich variety of resident animals, and they have retained a tangible wilderness character interrupted annually by the passing parade of wildebeest and associated hordes of open-topped Land Rovers, before they resume their status as the forgotten corners of the Serengeti.

The Serengeti is possibly unique in modern Africa in that it remains virtually intact as an ecological unit, neither bound in by fences nor pocketed off by encroaching cultivation. At the core of this ecosystem lies Tanzania's 14 763-square-kilometre Serengeti National Park, but the greater Serengeti, roughly 30 000 square kilometres in extent, incorporates several other reserves, notably the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Kenya's Masai Mara.

The Serengeti ecosystem is defined by an ancient migration route, one followed annually by around two million head of game - predominantly wildebeest, but also zebra, Thomson's gazelle, Grant's gazelle, topi, Coke's hartebeest and eland. Whether or not this would have been the most substantial migration of its kind before the arrival of gun-happy Europeans is anybody's guess. What is certain, however, is that nothing on a comparable scale occurs anywhere else in the world today.

The name Serengeti derives from the Maasai siringet, meaning 'endless plain'. Yet, oddly enough, only the Seronera Plains in the south-east of the national park conform to that description. Much of the true Serengeti lies within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, part of the original Serengeti National Park as it was proclaimed in 1951, but degazetted eight years later in response to Maasai protests at being evicted from their traditional grazing grounds.

The Seronera Plains are the main tourist focus within the park, largely because during the rains the wildebeest herds disperse into the area for the calving season, bringing with them an entourage of well-fed predators. For the rest of the year, however, Seronera's popularity is a simple matter of expedience - it is the closest part of the park to the Tanzanian 'safari capital' of Arusha. But there is much to be said for driving straight through Seronera to the less publicised and under-utilised northern and western sectors of the park.

The main tourist focus in the northern Serengeti is Lobo Wildlife Lodge, built in the early 1970s at a time when most of the reserve's tourism came directly across the border from Kenya. These days, however, Lobo lies somewhat off the beaten track, and a busy night outside the brief migration season probably means 10 per cent occupancy. The lodge itself is slightly rundown, and the décor so typical of its era that you half expect Roger Moore to slink out of the woodwork muttering 'Shaken, not stirred'. The setting, by contrast, is quite remarkable. Built on a large koppie, Lobo offers a spectacular view over the plains below, and the rocks are overrun with agama lizards and rock hyraxes, the latter attracting the beady interest of the black eagles that soar overhead.

The Lobo Hills are probably the most conventionally scenic part of the Serengeti, all rolling hills and massive granite outcrops, and the game viewing is good by any standards. Best of all, few people actually go to Lobo. For example, at Seronera, we parked with some 15 other vehicles to watch a cheetah, which eventually abandoned the gazelle it was eating. At Lobo, on the other hand, we were able to follow a cheetah for longer than an hour without even seeing another vehicle.

Large prides of lion are a feature of this area. One morning, only five minutes from the lodge, we saw a pride of 20 adult and sub-adult lions feeding on a buffalo they had killed the previous night. By midday, the buffalo carcass had been stripped bare and even the vultures had lost interest. This particular pride rarely strays far from the rocky hills around Lobo Lodge, and when we saw it resting the next day, we were surprised at the number of sub-adult males - at least four - which were tolerated by the dominant male.

A short drive from Lobo took us to Klein's Camp, a private conservancy along the eastern border of the park. Here we caught the tail end of the wildebeest migration on a night drive - an incredible sight, as the roving spotlight picked out literally thousands of pairs of glowing red eyes, and every so often a herd would spook to form a gigantic stream of moving flesh. Seen in isolation, a wildebeest may not be the most prepossessing of creatures, but the impact of these vast herds is one of immense grace: you cannot help but think what a tremendous evolutionary success these doleful-looking beasts are.

The wildebeest population of the Serengeti ecosystem increased from an estimated 250 000 animals in 1960 to roughly 1.5 million in 1977, a number that remains much the same today. This massive population explosion is attributed to improved control over rinderpest, a cattle-borne viral disease that was introduced to East Africa from Asia at the turn of the century with drastic affects on East Africa's ruminants. The greater kudu, for instance, was driven close to extinction in Kenya and northern Tanzania; the few remnant populations found today occur in places too dry to support domestic cattle. The long-term impact of rinderpest on the ruminants of the Serengeti has been negligible, but the great herds of wildebeest were virtually eliminated when the epidemic reached the region, and the disease remained a major contributory factor to the low survival rate of wildebeest calves into the early 1960s.

Introduced disease has also been responsible for the dramatic decline in African wild dog populations in northern Tanzania. Ten years ago, packs of wild dog were common throughout the Serengeti ecosystem - Richard Estes, in his superb Safari Companion, published as recently as 1993, lists the Serengeti and adjacent Masai Mara as two of six African game reserves where wild dogs are 'often seen'. The numerous studies of wild dogs in this region, including one by Estes himself, have contributed more than any others to our understanding of their behaviour, and have resulted in several publications and documentaries, notably Jane Goodall and Hugo von Lawick's Innocent Killers, published in 1971.

Today, wild dogs are virtually extinct in northern Tanzania, victim to an epidemic of canine distemper spread via infected domestic dogs. It has been several years since any wild dogs have been seen in the Serengeti, and the park management is offering a significant reward to the first person who reports and reliably documents a wild dog sighting. The only resident population of wild dogs in the region was introduced to the rather obscure Mkomazi Game Reserve in the mid-1990s. Over the last year, however, I've heard two reliable first-hand reports of wild dogs in Tarangire National Park, roughly 100 kilometres east of the Serengeti, which suggests that the prospect of these prolific breeders re-colonizing their former haunts, though forlorn, is not entirely hopeless.

The fate of the wild dog notwithstanding, the Serengeti's large ungulate herds provide rich pickings to an impressive volume and variety of carnivores. Leopard, though widespread, are most likely to be encountered in the thin string of acacias and sausage trees that line the Seronera River, while cheetah favour the open grassland towards Ngorongoro. Spotted hyaenas are abundant throughout the park, where they hunt their own prey with greater regularity than in many other parts of Africa. Bat-eared foxes are common, too, and all three types of jackal are present, with the black-backed jackal more likely to be encountered in woodland, the Asiatic jackal more prolific on the plains, and the side-striped jackal relatively uncommon throughout. Early risers stand a good chance of encountering other small nocturnal predators - we've come across serval, civet, genet and African wild cat at various times.

It has been estimated that there are some 20 lion prides resident in the Western Corridor, the sliver of the Serengeti that protrudes from the main body of the national park almost to the shore of Lake Victoria. Characterized by dense stands of scrubby grey whistling thorns as well as patches of grassland dotted with isolated acacias, the Western Corridor is bisected by the perennial Grumeti River and a fringing belt of riparian woodland. This riverine forest harbours several species you wouldn't usually associate with the Serengeti: the beautiful black-and-white colobus monkey, for instance, and a number of attractive birds such as eastern plantain-eater, Ross's turaco and black-headed gonolek.

Accommodation within the Western Corridor is restricted to two exclusive tented camps. Conservation Corporation Africa's Grumeti River Camp, a luxury bush camp set alongside a small pool which attracts a constant stream of large game and birds, is in our estimation the most atmospheric in the Serengeti. The nearby Kirawira Tented Camp is in the same league, though the Edwardian décor creates a mood that is more colonial than bush. Kirawira will hold a greater appeal for those who don't particularly relish the prospect of having to dodge the hippos and buffalos that hang around the tents at Grumeti River Camp at night.

The limited accommodation in the Western Corridor means that tourist traffic is minimal. But not so the wildlife. The Grumeti River supports a prodigious population of vastly proportioned crocodiles, whose large size is attributed to the annual feeding bonanza provided when the wildebeest migration crosses the river in about June. Large herds of giraffe, zebra, impala and wildebeest are resident on the more open floodplain, which is also a good place to seek out bat-eared fox, black-backed jackal and leopard.

The Serengeti has few peers when it comes to close encounters with lions. An estimated 1 500 lions reside within the national park, with a similar number spread across the rest of the greater Serengeti ecosystem. As a regular safari-goer, I have perhaps become rather blasé about lions - they are not, after all, the most active of beasts - but the Serengeti has a habit of reawakening my dormant fascination for these immensely powerful predators, as every day brings another memorable sighting.

It was in the Western Corridor that we came across the extraordinary sight of a pair of sub-adult lions resting in a tree. Such behaviour has often been documented in Lake Manyara National Park, which lies in the Rift Valley east of the Serengeti, but it is unusual elsewhere. On our return to Arusha, I was presented with recent photographic evidence of tree-climbing lions in Tarangire National Park. Similar behaviour had been noted by researchers in the Ngorongoro Crater back in 1961, during a tsetse-fly outbreak that followed abnormally heavy rains. The rainy season of 1997/98 was the wettest on record in northern Tanzania, resulting in an outbreak of tsetse flies, so it seems likely that some of the region's lions responded by escaping to the trees. Our visit to the Serengeti came months after the tsetse fly population had subsided to normal levels; only time will tell whether the sub-adults we encountered represent a generation of lions that has acquired arboreal habits at a formative age.

I am constantly surprised at what good birding there is in the Serengeti, a reserve associated with open grasslands. Close on 550 bird species have been recorded in the national park, and birders can be certain of ticking three Tanzania endemics: the grey-rumped spurfowl, Fischer's lovebird and rufous-tailed weaver. Of these, the lovebird is particularly striking, but the weaver is more unusual, easily mistaken at first glance for a babbler due to its scaly appearance and habit of bouncing around in small noisy groups. The Serengeti is excellent raptor country, with some 50 species on record. The tawny eagle is probably the most common large bird of prey, and Montagu's harrier is frequently seen flying over areas of open grassland. Vultures are prolific, in particular white-backed, Rüppell's griffon, and lappet-faced and hooded vultures, and a small population of Egyptian vultures is resident.

Our overall impression is that the Serengeti is in pretty good ecological shape. True, there are no longer any wild dogs, and roan antelope, always scarce, haven't been seen in years. Black rhinos have been poached close to extinction, though a few individuals remain in the Masai Mara and an introduced population of around 20 seems reasonably secure in the Ngorongoro Crater. Tourism, too, has created problems, particularly those related to vehicle congestion. The animal most affected by this is the cheetah, whose favoured hunting hours correspond with prime game-viewing hours - in the Masai Mara, where off-road driving is tolerated, cheetahs have been forced to adjust their hunting habits. The Tanzanian authorities are sensitive to this: off-road driving is forbidden in the Ngorongoro Crater and within 20 kilometres of Seronera, a restriction that has recently been extended to the immediate vicinity of Lobo.

When I first visited the Serengeti in 1992, I was prepared to be disappointed - could anything really live up to the hype? Three visits later, I have yet to be let down by what, in my opinion, is certainly a close contender for Africa's finest game reserve. Whether one sticks to the Seronera Plains or strikes out into the Western Corridor and Lobo Hills, whether one visits in or out of season, the Serengeti always offers superlative game viewing. Better still, there is the awesome realization that here, perhaps uniquely, one is traveling through an ecosystem whose borders and rhythms have barely been altered by human intervention.

Getting there
Most trips to the Serengeti are based out of Arusha, the 'safari capital' of northern Tanzania. Air Tanzania flies between Johannesburg and Arusha twice weekly.

Entry requirements
A valid passport is required. So, for most nationalities, is a visa, which costs around US$30 and can be bought on arrival.

Health requirements
The only stipulated requirement is a yellow fever certificate - especially if visiting from South America or elsewhere in Africa. Malaria precautions are recommended.

When to visit
The Serengeti is remarkable throughout the year. The rains (March to May and October to December) may affect road conditions, but this is not usually a serious problem. The wildebeest migration generally occurs between April and June, while the wildebeest are concentrated in the southern Serengeti during the calving season from December to May.

Further reading
Tanzania: The Bradt Travel Guide by Philip Briggs (1999 edition distributed in South Africa by Struik);

The Safari Companion - A Guide to Watching African Animals by Richard D. Estes (Russel Friedman Books).

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