Page 43 - ELITE PLUS MAGAZINE VOL8

 Zebras join the wildebeests for the annual migration.Serengeti National Park, inscribed as a UNESCO natural World Heritage Site in 1981, is located in northern Tanzania covering an area of 14,000 square kilometers. I’ve been to Serengeti 6 times, the last trip being in June 2015, and in my opinion it is one of the best African safari destinations. Serengeti’s biggest attraction is of course wildlife, including all the Big Five – elephant, lion, rhinoceros, buffalo, and leopard, and more than 2 million ungulates featuring the annual migration of 1.5 million wildebeests and 500,000 zebras from Serengeti to Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya.My favorite time to visit Serengeti is around the middle of June when the dry season begins and the wildebeests and the zebras are congregating in the vast Serengeti Plains getting ready to move northward to Masai Mara searching for fresh short grass and water. The wildebeests and the zebras travel together and depend on each other in spotting predators, relying on the wildebeests’ keen sense of hearing and the zebras’ good eyesight. That’s the main reason we see the wildebeests and the zebras often graze and move together.The first-time visitors to Serengeti would be surprised to see the plains covered with tall grass and often asked the guide why the wildebeests and the zebras migrate to search for grass when the plains are full with grass. The answer is that the wildebeests and the zebras prefer short grass and will migrate when the grass become taller. Another question that follows is what kind of animals would eat tall grass, and the answer is African wild buffalo. On my last trip to Serengeti I saw thousands and thousands of wildebeests and zebrasElite+ 41