Camping in the Serengeti: What You NEED to Know Before You Go

Camping in the Serengeti was an incredible experience I’m so glad I got to have. If you fancy including it in your Tanzania trip, read on for the Serengeti camping experience lowdown…

“If you need the toilet in the night, look out of your tent and check for eyes first. If the coast is clear take your torch and do it as close to the tents as possible. Do not walk up to the toilets.”

I put my bottle of water down, stared at the tour leader to see if she was joking and vowed not to drink another drop until daylight.

Apparently G Adventures were serious when they said we’d be camping in the Serengeti, but I thought we’d at least have some sort of electric fence, barrier, wires, brick walls; anything, to separate woman from beast. But no, apart from the material of my sleeping bag and the canvas on the tent to protect me I was fair game for any of the thousands of animal species that call the Serengeti home.

Camping in the Serengeti

Around 40 of us were camped at the site. It was chucking it down with rain English-summer-style when I was camping in the Serengeti, so we were all in bed for around 9pm. I lay there flinching at every sound and just waiting for what I thought was the inevitable stampede. My doxycycline-infused brain was visualising myself as Simba in the gorge – the wildebeest were on the move and the hyenas were chasing them towards my tent.

Ten minutes went by and I was still wide awake and on high alert. I could hear the girls in the other tents nervously chatting and giggling and tried to allow it to sooth me to sleep, but as soon as I heard a non-human sound my body tensed up.

“Something just brushed past our tent,” my roomie (tentie?) whispered.