Northern Serengeti Safari: The Kogatende and Lamai Guide

Summary: A northern Serengeti safari is built around two places, Kogatende and the Lamai Wedge, between roughly July and October, when the wildebeest herds pile up on the Mara River and brave the crossings. It’s the remotest and least crowded corner of the park, and in the dry season it holds more of the migration than the Masai Mara just over the Kenyan border. For an 8-day overland-and-fly circuit taking in Tarangire, Manyara, Ngorongoro and the far north, non-resident peak-season rates run from about USD 6,340 to USD 12,640 per person sharing.

Jump to Section

What Fees Are Included
8-Day Package Rates
The Mara Crossing Points
Kogatende Airstrip and Flights
Tsetse, Gates and the North-East Corner
Northern Serengeti FAQ

The far north doesn’t feel like the rest of the park. The endless central plains give way to rolling hills, granite ridges and the Mara River cutting through the middle of it, and for a few months a year this becomes the busiest wildlife stage in Africa. A northern Serengeti safari is really a migration trip: you come here, between about July and October, for the river crossings.

It rewards patience more than anything else. You can spend a long morning parked above the river while thousands of wildebeest mass on the bank and lose their nerve, then cross in a few wild minutes, or not at all. The pay-off, when it comes, earns the wait, and because the north is remote and harder to reach, you watch it with a fraction of the vehicles you’d find over the border in Kenya.

8-Day Package Rates

Here’s a real 8-Day/7-Night route for two sharing a private 4×4: a single night each near Tarangire, Lake Manyara and the Ngorongoro Crater on the way in, then four nights in the far north where the crossings happen. Non-resident USD per person.

8-Day Double-Occupancy Safari Packages

Package Tier	8-Day Rate (Per Person Sharing)	Camps: Tarangire / Manyara / Crater / North Serengeti
Budget Comfort	USD 6,340	Sangaiwe Tented Lodge / Farm of Dreams / Karatu Simba / Osinon Camp
Mid-Range Classic	USD 7,390	Maramboi Tented Camp / Kirurumu Manyara / Rhino Lodge / Nyikani Migration Camp
Luxury Signature	USD 9,140	Lemala Mpingo Ridge / Lake Manyara Kilimamoja / Ngorongoro Serena / Lemala Kuria Hills
Luxury Plus Ultra	USD 12,640	Sanctuary Swala Camp / Manyara luxury lodge / andBeyond Crater Lodge / Sayari Camp

Optional add-on: a sunrise hot air balloon flight over the northern plains or the Mara loops, USD 600 per person, including the TANAPA permit, the launch and a champagne breakfast on landing.

The far-north camps sit at the top of the range for a reason: there are few of them, they’re flown in, and in August they’re full. We’ll price it against your dates so you can see where the real costs land.

What Fees Are Included

Our rates are all-in for the safari itself. What’s covered, and what isn’t:

What’s covered

All daily conservation permits and destination taxes, collected by TANAPA.
Private use of a fitted 4×4 cruiser with heavy-duty suspension, large windows and an open roof hatch.
Fuel, and a professional driver-guide.
Concession fees for every night you sleep inside the park boundaries.
All meals, cold water in the vehicle fridge, and your room on a shared-double basis.
The one-way bush flight from the northern airstrip back to Arusha, taxes and luggage handling included.

What’s not

International flights and your tourist visa ($100 for US citizens).
Tips for your guide and the camp teams.
Laundry, premium drinks at the bar, and personal travel insurance.

The park fees behind the price

The government charges baked into every rate, per adult per day with the 18% VAT already in. This circuit includes the Ngorongoro Crater, run by the NCAA, so its fees sit here too:

Serengeti entry: USD 82.60 per adult / day.
Inner-park lodge concession: USD 59 to 60 per adult / night.
Ngorongoro Crater entry: USD 70.80 per adult / day.
Ngorongoro Crater vehicle descent: USD 295 per vehicle / descent.

The park system is also overseen by the MNRT.

The Mara Crossing Points

The northern landscape is open grassland broken by granite outcrops, the largest being the Wogakuria kopjes, where lions and leopards lie up through the midday heat. The main event runs along the Mara, where guides talk in numbered crossing points, one to ten; points 4, 7 and 9 draw the most traffic, and in this season a camp’s distance from them matters more than its star rating.

North of the river sits the Lamai Wedge, a 600-square-kilometre triangle of red-oat-grass plains added to the park in 1965, hemmed in by the Mara to the south and the Kenyan border to the north. It’s the quiet secret of the migration: a Serengeti Research Institute study found only about a third of the wildebeest, and fewer of the zebra, ever cross into the Masai Mara, so from July to November Lamai often holds more of the herd than the famous reserve next door. It’s also the best place in East Africa to see eland, the continent’s largest antelope, with bulls topping a thousand kilos.

The detail most guides won’t volunteer is how often the herds cross back. They’ll plunge north through point 4, graze the Lamai grass for a day or two, then turn and recross south, which means you can sit on the Tanzanian bank and watch the Mara crossings without ever needing a Kenyan visa or a second set of vehicle permits. The north is also one of the few sectors open to proper walking safaris, out around Kogatende. And when the herds finally drift south in late October, the eastern Lobo valley holds them, and its resident lions and leopards, well into November.

The camps nearest the busy crossing points book out close to a year ahead for August and September. If those are your months, get in early. Send us your travel window.

Kogatende Airstrip and Flights

Most fly-out trips use the Kogatende airstrip, a gravel strip on the south bank of the Mara with a shade shelter and little else: no terminal, no check-in desk, no baggage belt. What it does have is position. Klein’s Gate is about a kilometre away, the Larelamangi salt lick two, and the Lobo kopjes three, so you land more or less straight into the game.

Flights run on small Cessna Caravans with carriers like Coastal Aviation and Auric Air, and the rule is soft bags only: a 15 kg duffel that squashes into the cargo pod, never a rigid roller case, which simply won’t fit through the hatch. Pack soft, keep the camera bag on your lap, and check the packing list for the rest.

Tsetse, Gates and the North-East Corner

The wooded river corridors up here are thick with tsetse flies; guides only half-joke about the densest belts being “savanna meat lockers.” The flies fix on dark blue and black, so neutral khaki or olive is the sensible call, windows up in the deep shade and down again out on the open grass pans.

The Bologonja Springs corner in the north-east is the exception worth the bites: a spring-fed pocket of lush forest near the Kenyan border that pulls in rollers, kingfishers, hoopoes and crowned cranes, with the Larelamangi salt lick just downstream, where elephants and buffalo come to work the mineral-rich mud.

Two gates serve this corner, Klein’s and Bologonja, and the thing to get right before you arrive is permits. The northern river loops need the right multi-zone concession on top of the basic entry, and a vehicle that turns up without it gets held at the inner checkpoint while it’s sorted, which is exactly the kind of lost afternoon a licensed operator exists to prevent. One bit of northern history worth a pause if you pass it: the old Kogatende ranger post was built like a small fort during the poaching years of the 1950s and 60s, and the rangers stationed there will still happily talk if they have a quiet moment.

Northern Serengeti FAQ

How far is it from Arusha to the northern Serengeti?

About 450 km (280 miles) to the Kogatende loops, 7 to 8 hours of gravel if you push straight through, which is why the longer itineraries break the journey with nights near Tarangire or Karatu.

Can you drive it in one afternoon?

No. It’s too far and too rough to do in an afternoon, and trying it leaves you worn out before the safari has begun. Spread the transit across a few days with stops on the way.

Are the river crossings guaranteed in peak season?

No, and any guide who promises a crossing on a given afternoon is overselling. The herds can graze the ridges for three days without going near the water. The one real way to improve your odds is time: several nights at a northern camp inside the July-to-October window.

How much cash should we carry for tipping?

Budget roughly USD 20 a day for your driver-guide and USD 15 a day for camp staff, split across your group, in clean US bills printed after 2013, since worn or older notes are often refused. The tipping guide goes into the detail.

Plan Your Northern Safari

A last northern-specific thing: there are no ATMs once you’re past the park gates, so draw whatever cash you’ll need for tips and incidentals while you’re still in Arusha. It’s a small thing that’s awkward to fix 400 km later.

When you’re ready, send your rough dates and group size to our Arusha team on the quote page and we’ll build the northern leg around the crossings and the camps that sit closest to them. If you’re still planning, how to plan a Serengeti safari and the cost breakdown are good places to start.