SERENGETI
The endless plain. The migration that has never stopped.
When I was younger, my mother gave me a Ralph Lauren safari scarf.
On it: lions, a woman with a camera, a typewriter, a letter about travelling through Africa. It looked like it belonged in an old Hemingway film. I kept it for years.
The first time I flew over the Serengeti, I pressed my face to the window. Zebras running wild below. The land raw and ancient and vast in a way that no photograph had prepared me for. The earth, from up there, looked like it had always been exactly this — freckled with kopjes, dry and scorched and endless.
I landed to song and dancing. My tent — not so humble — looked out over open plains with a bathtub positioned outside, facing nothing but sky and grass and whatever decided to walk past.
Twelve days I would spend here on that first visit. My first time photographing big-maned lions. The air was dry and scorching. The earth felt like it shook when the prides moved. I had carried that scarf across years and an ocean, and standing here I understood that even the scarf had underestimated it.
This place reached far beyond what any image of it had promised.
The Serengeti holds one of the highest lion densities in Africa — estimated at over 3,000 individuals across the ecosystem. These prides have been studied for decades, some of the most documented wildlife populations on earth.
Lions here are bold and unhurried. They sleep in the road. They own the light at dusk. They carry themselves with the certainty of an animal that has never been required to be afraid of anything in its own landscape.
The images I return to again and again are not of dramatic kills. They are of a sleeping lion in the afternoon shade — entirely certain of its place in the world, entirely uninterested in ours.
Other Animals & Species Facts
Leopards drape themselves across fig trees in the Seronera valley — the most reliably leopard-dense area in the Serengeti, where the riverine forest gives them the cover and the height they prefer. Cheetahs hunt the short-grass plains in the early morning, when the light is still cool and the grasses are low enough to show the full length of a sprint.
Beyond the cats: elephants move through the woodland margins at dusk. Hippos occupy the river pools. Hundreds of bird species cross the sky. The Serengeti holds its wildlife in layers — you find what you stay still long enough to see.
The Serengeti holds one of the highest lion densities in Africa — estimated at over 3,000 individuals across the ecosystem. These prides have been studied continuously since the 1960s, making them some of the most documented wildlife populations on earth.
The Seronera valley in the central Serengeti is one of the most reliable places in Africa to find leopards. The combination of fig trees, riverine forest, and year-round water makes it prime leopard territory.
Cheetahs on the short-grass plains of the southern Serengeti are among the most observable in Africa — open terrain, low vegetation, and high prey density give them — and you — unobstructed sight lines.
SERENGETI LANDSCAPE
The word serengeti comes from the Maasai siringet — meaning endless plain. That is exactly what it is. The central grasslands are short-grass, wind-swept, and almost treeless — a landscape that rewards a wide-angle eye and a long patience.
The western corridor follows the Grumeti River through acacia woodland. The northern Mara ecosystem, where the migration crosses into Kenya, is rolling and wooded — entirely different in character from the open central plains.
The Serengeti changes completely with the seasons. The rains bring green and wildebeest calves. The dry season opens the plains and draws the predators to the remaining water. Follow the animals and you follow the landscape.
Marley on the Namiri Plains, Serengeti
The Namiri Plains are lion country in the deepest sense — a part of the eastern Serengeti managed specifically as a predator stronghold, where the density of cats and the openness of the terrain make encounters unlike anything else in the ecosystem.
I have photographed many lions in many places. The ones I carry most are Bob Jr. and King Marley.
Bob Jr. had the darker mane — raven black, heavy, pressing toward the earth as he walked. He moved with a particular kind of calm. Not the calm of an animal at rest. The calm of an animal that has nothing to prove. The first time he approached our vehicle, walked past, and stopped, I understood why people travel across the world for this. Not for the spectacle. For the proximity to something that does not need you and acknowledges you anyway.
Marley’s mane was longer — thick and matted, the way dreadlocks form from weight and time. We pulled alongside him on an elevated bank beside the track and I was eye level with a lion. He sat turning his head slowly, scenting the air. He was unhurried in a way that makes you unhurried too. You adjust to their tempo. There is no other option.
Both ruled the Namiri Plains for seven years. On 11th March 2023, three younger lions challenged them on the plains they knew better than anywhere on earth. Bob Jr. and Marley did not survive.
These prints exist because they did. That is what fine art does — it holds a record of what the world is in danger of forgetting. These are not photographs of lions. They are portraits of two specific animals who lived fully and are gone.
The Serengeti doesn’t give you perspective. It takes away the illusion that you ever had it.
field notes
TRAVEL WITH INTENTION
The Serengeti rewards planning more than almost anywhere in Africa. When you go matters as much as where you go — the migration moves, the light changes by month, and the landscape shifts with the season.
I am planning Serengeti itineraries that place you in the right corridor at the right time — and leave enough space to be surprised by what you find when you stop trying to find it.
ASILIA
NAMIRI PLAINS
Asilia Namiri Plains sits in the eastern Serengeti
A remote, private camp set within the Namiri Plains area, managed specifically as a predator stronghold. This is the territory Bob Jr. and Marley knew. The camp exists because the wildlife here is exceptional, and it contributes directly to keeping it that way.
Small, unhurried, and built around the wildlife rather than around comfort for its own sake. Solar power, low-impact construction, and Asilia’s broader commitment to conservation and community benefit across their East Africa portfolio are embedded throughout.
The guides here know this terrain and the animals on it with the depth that comes from years in the same landscape. That knowledge — who is where, what is moving, what the light will do at six in the evening — is the most important thing the camp offers.
Serengeti National Park & Grumeti Reserve
Serengeti National Park was established in 1951 and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. At over 14,750 square kilometres, it is one of the largest and most significant protected areas on earth.
Adjacent private conservancies — including Grumeti to the west and the Mara to the north — add critical buffer zones where wildlife can move freely and tourism revenue funds both conservation and community benefit.
The Serengeti ecosystem requires this scale to function. The migration is not a spectacle that can be contained within park boundaries. It requires connected landscape at the scale of the landscape itself — and the partnerships holding that in place are among the most important conservation relationships in Africa.
“Asilia invests in East Africa’s wild landscapes, transforming vulnerable areas into thriving conservation economies.”
Deanna
