Hot Air Balloon Safari Serengeti

Hot Air Balloon Safari — Dawn Over the Serengeti Plains

The alarm goes at 4:30am. It is still completely dark outside the tent, and the Serengeti is making the sounds it makes at that hour — lion calls drifting from the direction of the kopjes, something moving in the darkness nearby, the deep cold of the highland night before the equatorial dawn burns it off. You dress quickly, drink coffee in the mess tent, and drive to the balloon launch site in the dark.

By the time the balloon is inflated and the burner fires, the horizon to the east has begun to lighten. The basket fills. The ground crew releases the tethers. And then — gently, silently except for the periodic roar of the burner — the Serengeti drops away beneath you.

What happens next is very difficult to describe to someone who has not experienced it. The scale of the Serengeti, which is already extraordinary from a vehicle, becomes something different from the air. The herds that you know are large reveal their true size — dots becoming thousands, thousands becoming the horizon. The lion pride on the kopje is visible from above, the animals spread across the rock. A cheetah is moving through the long grass, leaving a wake in it. The Seronera River catches the first light and turns it gold.

One hour. That is the duration of the flight. It is an hour that most guests describe as the finest sixty minutes of their entire safari.

The Champagne Bush Breakfast

After landing — in a clearing chosen by the pilot, somewhere in the open Serengeti — the ground crew has driven overland to meet you. Tables are set in the bush. White linen, silver service, fresh fruit, eggs cooked to order, Tanzanian coffee. The pilot pours champagne. You eat in the open Serengeti, with whatever wildlife has chosen to investigate the balloon’s landing site — which is sometimes a curious giraffe, sometimes a distant herd, and on one extraordinary morning we guided, a lion that sat and watched from sixty metres away through the entire meal.

It is not the finest breakfast because of the food — though the food is excellent. It is the finest breakfast because of where you are eating it.

The Best Time to Do the Balloon Safari

The balloon operates year-round but the experience varies beautifully by season. During the dry season (June–October), the Migration herds below you can number in the hundreds of thousands — from the air, the scale of the movement is comprehensible in a way that ground-level viewing rarely achieves. During the calving season (December–March), the southern Serengeti plains are carpeted with wildebeest calves and the predator activity visible from the balloon is extraordinary. The green season flights offer the Serengeti at its most photogenic — lush, layered, with dramatic cloud formations building over the distant crater rim.