Ngorongoro Conservation Area
This multiple land-use area that includes the famous Ngorongoro Crater is populated by Maasai and wildlife, and is an experiment in allowing wild animals to live side by side with traditional pastoralists. It is not a national park and therefore encourages walking as a way to explore its many and diverse corners.
The experiment is successful in some respects and less successful in others. While the Ngorongoro Crater remains one of the world's great wildlife sanctuaries protecting important animals like the black rhino and harbouring spectacular concentrations of predators and plains game, in other parts of the Conservation Area wildlife has fared less well. A reduction in wildlife has been recorded in areas where there are high levels of Maasai habitation where there is increasing pressure to cultivate land. However the Conservation Area also incorporates a large part of the Serengeti Plains ecosystem and in these areas the use of the land by pastoralists has generally been in tune with the needs of the migratory herds that spend more than half the year in the Serengeti. Losers in this case are probably lion prides whose predeliction for cattle is rather at odds with the Maasai's way of life!
Depending on the season, we walk in different parts of the Conservation Area. When the plains are dry and devoid of animals we walk in the cool highlands where Maasai have permanent settlements and the non-migratory animals retreat for grazing and water. Here we encounter the beautiful rolling highland grasslands bounded by extinct volcanoes where buffalo lurk and eland roam. During the first rains we concentrate on the short grass plains of the southern Serengeti where the wildebeest come to give birth and the full spectacle of the migration is laid out before you, predators, prey and every other creature involved in the Serengeti's amazing web of life. As the game ebbs and flows across the plains, I relish the chance to camp and walk up in the ancient Gol Mountains scarred as they are by steep ravines and dotted with secret, secluded campsites. Here I have had some of my favourite walks in areas that seem cut off from the rest of the Serengeti.
Check out two options for walks in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.
- A Dry Season Walking excursion in the Ngorongoro Highlands
- A Wet Season walking excursion to the Ndutu Woodlands
next: Tarangire