The Serengeti

The Maasai named it siringet — the place where the land runs on forever — and no one has improved on the description since. The Serengeti is fifteen thousand square kilometers of grass, granite and appetite, stage of the largest overland migration on Earth: a million and a half wildebeest, with zebra and gazelle for company, walking a great clockwise circle all year, every year, timed to rain nobody announces and everybody obeys.

The traveller chooses a chapter: the southern plains from December to March, when half a million calves are born in a matter of weeks and the predators keep terrible office hours; the western corridor's Grumeti crossings in June; or the northern Mara river from August, where the crocodiles run the year's toughest examination. Between chapters there are the kopjes — granite islands where lions take their thrones —, leopards in the Seronera valley's sausage trees, and balloons rising at dawn over a plain with no far edge.

The Guide's practical counsel: this is a book-ahead wilderness — lodges and mobile camps fill many months out, and park fees are real money honestly spent —; the classic road in runs from Arusha past Ngorongoro's crater rim, a detour that is itself a wonder of the world; dust is the uniform, dawn layers are wisdom, and the migration is weather, not clockwork — give it days, not hours, and it will give you the greatest show the land still stages.