Serengeti

The Serengeti is the stage for the largest single migration of land mammals on earth — over a million wildebeest moving in a rough, rain-driven circuit through Tanzania and into Kenya’s Mara and back. But the ecosystem holds its own outside the herds: resident lion prides in the Seronera Valley, cheetah on the short-grass plains near Ndutu, and leopard in the riverine forest along the Grumeti.

Its scale is the thing that’s hard to convey until you’re in it — horizon in every direction, granite kopjes rising out of the grassland like islands, and a sense that the migration is simply the most visible layer of something much larger.