Safari to Serengeti North

pretty landscapes and decent resident wildlife

Serengeti North is a much overlooked and relatively little-visited sector of the Serengeti National Park which acts as a critically important corridor for the main migration, connecting dry season areas to the north with the green season plains to the south.

The most interesting part is undoubtedly the impressive Lobo area, where a broad valley offers a mix of light woodland, open savanna and riverine vegetation that ensures reasonably reliable resident wildlife, notably lions and leopards. The Lobo area can also be particularly good for elephants, much more so than the rest of Serengeti.

The main wildebeest and zebra migration tends to pass through headed north during Jun-Jul and returns southward some time during Oct-Dec, although the timing is very unpredictable.

Overall we find that the migration experience here can be unpredictable and often underwhelming, not least because there’s a very limited road network, so getting around and finding animals can be something of a challenge.

The adjacent Ololosokwan area, where there’s a number of camps, has been known to host some shocking trophy hunting.

The area is usually visited as part of a guided overland safari of the greater region. However most of our guests tend to simply pass through without actually staying overnight, usually when travelling north to the Serengeti Mara area.

The Serengeti North area tends to feature in trips very rarely these days.

The usual stay duration is 1-2 days when transiting between the Serengeti and Lake Natron areas or 2-4 nights when staying at a more remote lodge.

Seasonality

The Serengeti region has to be one of the most seasonal locations in Africa.

Although there is literally no bad time to visit this part of the world, the annual cycle of weather, wildlife movements and visitor traffic flows combine to have an incredibly dramatic effect on trip planning during every single month of the year.

In this Serengeti North area, the migration movements through this area (north during Jun-Jul and south during Oct-Dec) are too unpredictable to plan trips around.

We therefore tend to visit any time May-Feb, with the intent of enjoying their landscapes and resident wildlife.

Where to stay

There’s not a great choice of places to stay in Serengeti North.

The stand-out option is Klein’s Camp, a very upmarket option which is located in the Ololosokwan area just outside the eastern border of the national park, which is strong for hiking and Maasai interaction, but tends to remain something of a niche option due to its distance from the prime wildlife areas.

Another relatively high quality option is Migration Camp, which tends to be in particularly high demand during mid-June to mid-July, when the migration herds tend to come through the surrounding woodlands on the way north.

The best known property is Lobo Lodge. Despite being a very large and dated motel style property, the dramatic position within a prominent kopje and the interesting 1970’s style architecture.

The link below will take you to a page where we present all of the lodges and camps in Serengeti North. If you change the month in the search sentence then the camp ratings will reorder appropriately to show you the very best options for that period.

something of a transit area, rather than a destination