The spectacle
Why nobody can book you a crossing
Four things have to line up, and only one of them is predictable. Here is what they are, and what your odds actually look like.
The four conditions
- The herds have to be at the river. Predictable to within a few weeks. This is the part planning can control.
- They have to want to cross. Driven by grazing on the far bank and pressure from the herds behind.
- They have to commit to a crossing point. They use traditional ones, but not reliably, and will walk miles along a bank before choosing.
- One animal has to go first. Nothing influences this. A herd can mass for six hours and then turn away.
Guides position on the first three and wait. Sometimes for a whole morning. It is genuinely thrilling and it is genuinely a gamble.
What the wait is actually like
Worth knowing before you commit three mornings to it: you drive to a likely point, and then you sit. Possibly for four hours, in the sun, with the engine off and several dozen other vehicles doing the same thing.
When it happens it is over in minutes and it is extraordinary. When it does not, you have spent a morning not looking at lions. Some people find the anticipation the best part of the trip; others would rather have been elsewhere. Worth knowing which you are.
Your realistic odds
| Time in the reserve | Realistic chance of seeing a crossing |
|---|---|
| 1 night, any month | Very low — effectively a lottery ticket |
| 2 nights in August | Moderate at best |
| 3 nights in August or September | Good |
| 4 or more nights in August or September | Very good, still not guaranteed |
| 3 nights in early July | Low — herds may not be in position |
| 3 nights in late October | Moderate, falling through the month |
| Any nights, November to June | Effectively nil |
Not a promise. No operator can give you one, and any that implies otherwise is selling something it cannot deliver.
Staying in a conservancy in crossing season
The crossings are inside the national reserve. From a conservancy camp it is typically an hour or more each way, plus a reserve entry fee for the day — so most conservancy camps run it as a full-day trip with a packed lunch.
That works. It also means two hours of driving before the waiting starts. If crossings are the point of your trip, sleep in the reserve.
The better way to plan it
Build a trip you would be glad of with no crossing at all: a conservancy for the quiet and the night drives, the reserve for the density, enough nights that the herds have time to do something. Then treat a crossing as the bonus it is.
People who plan that way come home happy in every year. People who plan around the crossing come home happy in most years, and furious in the rest.
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