The Northern parks
Northern Tanzania is home to arguably, the most iconic park in all of Africa – the Serengeti National Park. The Serengeti is over 14,700 km² and encompasses a range of landscapes and environments. The main draw to the Serengeti is its vast open plains, which were the inspiration for Disney’s Lion King. The Serengeti and its surrounding areas are also home to the Great Migration which is an annual pilgrimage of over 1.5 million wildebeest accompanied by 200,000 zebra.
The Ngorongoro Crater is located to the east of the Serengeti and is another iconic park in Africa. With a diameter of 20 kilometres and a depth of over 600 metres, the Ngorongoro is the largest extinct volcanic caldera in the world. The views and the actual geology of the crater is extraordinary in itself, but the game viewing on the crater floor is also fantastic.
It is probably the most reliable place to see rhino in Tanzania.
Smaller national parks in northern Tanzania include Lake Manyara and Tarangire National Park. These are both located south of Arusha and offer excellent bird life and huge elephant herds respectively. A northern Tanzania safari itinerary usually starts from Arusha and combines a safari in Lake Manyara on route to the Ngorongoro Crater to stay for two or three nights. After your full day descent into the crater, you will then fly into the Serengeti National Park (dependent on where the herds are). To make the itinerary longer, you can add a few nights in Taranagire National Park at the beginning of the itinerary but we would only recommend this between the months of July and October as the wildlife begins to migrate outside of this period.
Are the northern parks for me?
If you have never been to Tanzania, there is no denying that the northern parks are the best place to visit. They are the destinations that should be ‘ticked off’ and the ones that offer particular experiences and sightings (such as the Great Migration or the Ngorongoro Crater). The northern parks also work really well for families or multi-generational families heading on safari. This is because they have a range of accommodation including larger lodges which have family requirements like a swimming pool, air conditioning or private safari jeeps. With reliable internal airlines operating in Tanzania, you can easily combine the northern parks with a beach trip in Zanzibar afterwards.