Ngorongoro

Three million years ago, a volcano larger than Kilimanjaro collapsed in on itself, forming a caldera 19 kilometres across and 600 metres deep. Today that collapsed crater is one of the most extraordinary places on Earth — a self-contained world where 25,000 large animals live in an unbroken cycle of predator and prey, birth and death, season and season. There is nowhere else on the planet quite like the Ngorongoro Crater.

The crater floor holds the world's densest concentration of large mammals in the world. Lions that never leave the crater, their genes tracing an unbroken lineage back thousands of years. Elephant bulls that wander the swampy edges of Lake Magadi. Flamingos that paint the soda lake pink in the early morning light. And most precious of all — the black rhinoceros, one of the rarest animals on Earth, still present here in one of its last viable African sanctuaries.

Descending the crater wall in the early morning, when mist fills the caldera and the rim disappears into cloud above you, is a genuinely otherworldly experience. By the time you reach the crater floor, the mist has usually burned off and the plains stretch ahead in golden light. On a single morning drive, it is common to encounter all of the Big Five within a few kilometres of each other — an impossibility almost anywhere else in Africa.

At a Glance

Ngorongoro