Grumeti Game Reserve

A reserve on the Serengeti’s western flank

Grumeti Game Reserve lies on the western side of the Serengeti ecosystem, in the Serengeti and Bunda districts of Mara Region, and takes its name from the seasonal Grumeti River that runs through the country it protects. The Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority gives its area as 434.5 square kilometres and its gazettement as a protected area on 10 June 1994.

It is not run on its own. TAWA administers Grumeti together with Ikorongo Game Reserve as two reserves under a single administration, with one office at Mugumu, and most of what is published about one applies to both.

The area figures need care. TAWA’s reserve page gives Grumeti as 434.5 and Ikorongo as 558.9 square kilometres, a combined 993.4. TAWA’s own protected-areas register lists the two together as 5,000 square kilometres, gazetted in 1994 under Government Notice 214. Those are not reconcilable, both come from the same authority, and both are given here rather than one being chosen.

What is not in doubt is the reserve’s place in the wider system. TANAPA’s Serengeti brochure names Grumeti among the components of the Serengeti–Mara ecosystem, alongside the national park, part of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the Maswa, Ikorongo and Kijereshi reserves, the Loliondo Game Controlled Area and the Masai Mara across the border. UNESCO’s assessment of the Serengeti makes the same point from the other direction: the park alone cannot protect the ecosystem, and the reserves around it carry part of the load.

A concession, not a park — and what that changes

TAWA’s own description of Grumeti and Ikorongo is worth quoting for its precision: the reserves are hunting concessions where the most popular activity taking place is photographic tourism. Both halves of that sentence are true, and a traveller should know both. This is not a national park with a public gate, and it is not a wilderness closed to photographic visitors either. Access is through concession arrangements rather than by driving up and paying at a barrier.

The practical consequence is the activity list, and it is the reason concessions on the Serengeti’s edge are sold at all. TAWA lists game viewing, birdwatching, walking safaris, bush meals, camping, sundowners, night game drives and balloon safaris for these reserves.

Two of those are the point. Night game drives are not run inside Serengeti National Park — the park lists no such activity and does not appear in TANAPA’s night-drive schedule — and walking safaris, while permitted in the park, are far more freely available on a concession. Add limited vehicle numbers and the ability to go off the track where the concession holder allows it, and you have the trade a concession offers: less of the park’s scale, more freedom in how you use the ground. Bush dining and camping fill out the rest. Ballooning appears on TAWA’s list too, though ballooning in this ecosystem is separately established only over the national park itself, so it is worth confirming what is actually flown from a given concession rather than assuming the list is an inventory.

The river, the migration and the country

The Grumeti River is a seasonal river and the reason the migration’s western phase matters here. As the herds break up and move north and west from the southern plains, generally from around April, a substantial part of the population works through the western corridor and meets the Grumeti. The crossings are scattered across many points rather than concentrated at one, they are far less predictable than the Mara crossings, and they draw a fraction of the vehicles. The river is also known for very large Nile crocodiles that spend much of the year in its deep pools. The great migration safari guide covers the timing and why it cannot be scheduled.

The Rubana River forms the reserve’s northern boundary with the surrounding villages. The country is rolling rather than flat, and TAWA names its high points as Bangwesi Hill at 1,380 metres, Koroya Hill at 1,343 and Ridge Hill at 1,327.

On climate, TAWA gives temperatures of 15 to 28 °C, short rains from September to December and long rains from March to May, with a high season from June to October and a low season in January and February.

Because Grumeti is a game reserve rather than a national park, what you pay to enter comes from TAWA rather than from the TANAPA booklet. TAWA publishes US$50 for a non-citizen adult and US$30 for a child per 24 hours at Selous, Ikorongo, Grumeti and Maswa, and adds a wildlife conservation fee of US$25 per person per day for anyone staying at a camp or lodge inside a game reserve. Unlike the national park tariff, these schedules carry no effective date and no Government Notice number, so they cannot be tied to a year; the guide to what the conservation layer adds to a safari covers what that means for a quote.

Getting there

TAWA gives the distances as 350 kilometres from Arusha by way of Ngorongoro and the Serengeti, 260 kilometres from Mwanza, 120 from Musoma and 32 from Mugumu. The Fort Ikoma airstrip is about three kilometres away, which is how most visitors arrive. The guide to flying and driving between Tanzania’s northern parks turns those distances into hours and sets out what a flying leg buys back.

Grumeti is almost always combined with time in Serengeti National Park rather than visited alone, and the usual pattern is a few nights on the concession for the activities the park does not allow, either side of park nights for the scale and the density. How many nights that pattern needs, and what it displaces elsewhere, is worked through in the guide to how long a northern circuit itinerary has to be.

Common questions about Grumeti Game Reserve