The Great Migration and the Mara River Crossing, with Bob Harvey

The Mara Crossing is one of the holy grails of wildlife photography – and this adventure is designed to get you to the right place at the right time.

The Great Migration of the Serengeti is often perceived as an event that happens a couple times a year, like birds going north and south in the Americas.  Instead, it is the continuous movement of a couple million wildebeest and half that many zebras in search of green pastures in the Serengeti.  While the migration has no established route nor timetable, it basically makes a clockwise (sort of) route around the Serengeti.  In reality, the path and timing are determined by rains.  Wildebeest can smell rain falling many miles away – and are triggered by that smell to start walking toward where the rain falls.  Understand that migration is not one huge group of hooved animals all walking together, but a collection of many individuals following their noses.  Sometimes it appears that the Serengeti is just covered with animals and other times long strings of wildebeest and zebras seemingly following a leader.

In roughly August and September, the wildebeest’s noses lead them north toward the border with Kenya (the Serengeti ecosystem is mostly in Tanzania, but spills over into Kenya in the area referred to as the Mara).  Here they encounter the Mara River and its tributaries.  Crossing rivers is scary at best and dangerous as all get out when the water is high.  Huge Nile Crocodiles lurk here, looking for anything that dares cross the river.  And, the mayhem of the crossing sometimes injures or kills some of the herd.

This adventure is timed to put us in position to photograph those crossings, from the Tanzania side.  These are dramatic events – preceded by huge gatherings of wildebeest and zebras alongside the rivers – trying to get up courage to cross.  Then, all hell breaks loose, and the crossing takes place – a feeding frenzy of photographic opportunities that churns through memory cards like potato chips.  Spotting the crocodile action can be challenging, but if/when it happens you’ll want to make a lot of images quickly!

Don’t think, even for a moment, that this is a one-topic safari.  We’ll spend time working our way from Arusha to the northern Serengeti – spending quality time in Tarangire National Park and the Ngorongoro Crater before entering the Serengeti.  Then we’ll move up through the Central and Northern Serengeti, photographing along the way.  It will be dry – and animals will be close to water.  We’ll find many elephants in Tarangire and many birds, ungulates, and other mammals all along our route.  This is a great time to photograph raptors!

Expect all the big cats – leopards, lions, and cheetahs, each in their own environments.  And more lions as we get closer to the migration itself!  There are actually lions that skip the whole territory thing to hang out near the migrating herds!

We’ve spent a year of our lives guiding photography groups in this part of Africa – and have designed this safari with photographers in mind.  You’ll have charging/downloading electricity in your room or tent every night.  We have the best guides and the best maintained vehicles.  And a schedule that enables us to flex around animal news or weather conditions.  We’ll talk photography and prepare you for both the opportunities and the challenges we’ll face.

This is the big one!  Are you in?

As with everything in nature, one can plan and plan, but nature does what it will.  Long established rainfall patterns have created the migration (and are currently being impacted by climate change).  You can hang out all day watching wildebeest try to get up courage to cross – and they chicken out.  Fortunately, we plan around this and raise the odds with multiple days in the “zone”.