Everyone sells June to October. Here is the case for the months nobody recommends.
Almost every operator will tell you to come between June and October. It is good advice and it also happens to describe the most expensive months of the year. Here is the other side.
What the green season actually is
Two rainy periods. The long rains run roughly late March to May and are heavy. The short rains arrive around November and are much lighter — usually a dramatic afternoon storm that clears within the hour.
Neither is a wall of rain. Tanzania does not do all-day British drizzle. It does forty-five minutes of theatre and then sunshine.
What you gain
Price. April and May can be close to half the August rate for the same camp. That is not a marginal saving; it is the difference between a mid-range trip and a luxury one.
Emptiness. In November you can drive for an hour in the Serengeti without seeing another vehicle. In August you will queue at a leopard.
The landscape. The plains turn a green that photographs completely differently from the dry-season bleach, and the skies after a storm are the best light of the year.
Birds. The migrants arrive. Tanzania has well over a thousand recorded species and the green season is when most of them are visible and in breeding plumage.
Newborns. Not just the wildebeest calving in February — impala, warthog and zebra all drop young in the wet.
What you give up
Some of the certainty.
Game is more dispersed, because water is everywhere and animals do not need to come to the rivers. In Tarangire specifically a great deal of the wildlife simply walks out of the park. Black-cotton soil turns to grease and some tracks become impassable. A number of camps close entirely in April and May.
Who should and should not
Should: anyone who has been on safari before, anyone travelling on a tighter budget, photographers who care about landscape as much as wildlife, and birders.
Should not: anyone for whom this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip with no second chance. If you get one shot at it, buy the certainty.
The compromise nobody mentions
November. The short rains are light, the landscape is green within days, prices drop, the crowds vanish and the game is still reasonably concentrated. It is the most under-rated month in the Tanzanian calendar and we send people there constantly.
