An amazing once-in-a-lifetime event, a balloon safari above the Serengeti is especially ideal for a bird’s eye-view game viewing experience on your Maramatta Safaris in northern Tanzania. This premier national park offers hot air balloon trips out of three locations. In the Seronera River Valley in the Central Serengeti, where there is always water, animals congregates throughout the year. In May and June, the Great Migration travels through this area.

The Grumeti River, which is a feature of the Great Migration in June and July when hundreds of thousands of gnu face the enormous Nile crocodiles and many of them die while others veer off course to avoid the dangerous river, is part of the Western Serengeti. The wildebeests congregate on the South Serengeti grasslands starting in December in order to give birth to 8,000 baby animals in February.

The balloons are immense. Baskets are compartmented for comfort and security, accommodating 16 people for each one-hour voyage. The price reflects the enormous cost of the balloons due to a safety replacement every few hundred hours, equivalent to swapping with a high-end automobile.

High fees are payable to the national park for tourist concessions for every single passenger. A skilled, experienced and licensed pilot and staff of 20 are needed for each trip, including launching and recovery as well as transport to and from the launch and celebratory champagne breakfast.

Each flight is unique, some high enough to view the panoramic landscape for miles ahead, others low enough to see individual animals at close quarters. It is not a cheap excursion, but it will make your northern Tanzania vacation one of the most memorable of your whole life. It is possible to charter special private balloon flights in the Grumeti Reserve for honeymoon couples on their romantic trip in the great plains of Africa.