Tanzania Ngorongoro and Serengeti Route: Ngorongoro Crater rim to Seronera

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Ngorongoro Crater rim

   On the rim of Ngorongoro the first thing that hits you is the cold. At around 2,300 metres the air is thin and damp, the forest is wrapped in mist most mornings, and the wind whips over the edge of the caldera with a bite that surprises people who think of Africa as hot. Then the mist tears and the floor appears about six hundred metres below, a vast grassy bowl twenty kilometres across, with a lake glinting in the middle and tiny dots of animals scattered over the plain. It is one of the great views on the planet, and it takes a while to understand the scale.

   Read the complete Ngorongoro Crater rim write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Ngorongoro Crater rim is where the day begins. Nothing on this route is higher. Next is Olduvai Gorge, mostly downhill.

2. 2. Olduvai Gorge

   Olduvai Gorge is a scar across the dry plains of northern Tanzania, about forty-eight kilometres long and nearly a hundred metres deep, and what it holds is nothing less than the story of our own beginnings. The walls of the gorge expose layers of volcanic ash and sediment laid down over almost two million years, and in them Louis and Mary Leakey, working over decades, found stone tools and the bones of early humans. In 1959 Mary Leakey uncovered a skull of an early hominin, now called Paranthropus boisei, and later work produced remains of Homo habilis, one of the first members of our own genus.

   Read the complete Olduvai Gorge write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Olduvai Gorge comes up about 57 km into the recorded legs. Next is Seronera.

3. 3. Seronera

   Serengeti means endless plain in the Maasai language, and Seronera is where the plain stops being a word and starts being a place. It is the central hub of the national park, with an airstrip, a ranger post, a visitor centre and lodges, set where the Seronera river threads through a landscape of acacia, rocky outcrops called kopjes and open grass that reaches to the horizon. The park covers about fourteen thousand square kilometres, and this central valley is the best area for cats. Leopards sleep in sausage trees along the river, lions sprawl on the kopjes in the heat, and cheetahs use the long grass to stalk gazelles.

   Read the complete Seronera write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   The route ends here after 159 km.