Balloon Safari

There is no more dramatic way to experience the Serengeti than from the basket of a hot air balloon drifting silently above the plains at dawn. As the sun rises over the horizon, the landscape below reveals itself in extraordinary detail — herds of wildebeest moving like slow rivers across the grassland, elephants at the waterholes, lions resting after a night’s hunt. The silence is total, broken only by the occasional burst of the balloon’s burner and the distant calls of birds waking below.

The flight typically lasts around an hour, launching in the pre-dawn darkness and landing as the morning light reaches full strength across the plains. It concludes with a traditional champagne breakfast served in the bush — tables laid in the open savannah, surrounded by the landscape you have just floated above. Operated year-round from camps in the central and southern Serengeti, the balloon safari is the single most memorable add-on experience available in Tanzania and well worth the additional cost for the perspective it delivers.