There is no such thing as complete silence in the Serengeti. In the morning, the birds sing complicated, pretty songs to each other. By lunchtime, if you happen to find yourself in the middle of a herd of several thousand wildebeest - easy when 1.4 million migrate through the region - all you can hear is the sound of hooves and their low grunts. They sound like giant bullfrogs. Over the crackle of the camp fire at night, you can hear the deep growls of lions and crickets tuning up for the almost-deafening string orchestra.
Nothing ever stops here. There's something always wanting to eat or avoid being eaten; life and death everywhere you look. Within minutes, on a morning game drive in our sturdy Toyota Land Cruiser, we pass stripped wildebeest carcasses and the placentas of newborn calves, left behind on the plains and glistening in the sun, as vultures circle overhead, their minds on this - well, really rather revolting - breakfast.
The wildebeest migration, along with 500,000 zebra and gazelle, is considered by some to be one of the seven natural wonders of the world. Every year, they pour north and travel clockwise for 1,800 miles from the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania to the Maasai Mara in Kenya in search of fresh grass made green by the rains. Along the way, they do their best to avoid being eaten by lions, cheetahs or hyenas, cross crocodile-infested rivers and fend off starvation and drought.
You know it's going to be impressive, but nothing really prepares you for the sight. The first we see is a dark line on the horizon (our guide, Mohammed, points it out; to me it just looks like a forest in the distance). As we get closer, lone wildebeest keep a lookout, then gradually we pass more and more. Soon we're in the middle of herd of about 60,000.
A newborn wildebeest calf, born minutes earlier, struggles to free itself from its slick protective balloon as its mother looks agitated when we get too close. When we back off, she rushes to it and helps it up onto its glossy, spindly legs, but I can't help feeling guilty that we've interrupted the bond they are supposed to be making (I feel the same twinge of guilt later in the week when we visit the Maasai Mara in Kenya, to the north, and several tourist jeeps crowd around two cheetahs, separating them).
At times like this you wonder if you should be there at all. The effects of human interference in this area are obvious. We were told by our guide not to expect to see any rhino - there are just 13 in the Serengeti's 5,700 square miles of plains, and each has its own human bodyguard to keep it away from tourists and, more importantly, poachers. Thirteen is considered a success: after mass ivory poaching in the 1970s and 1980s, just two survived. Bush-meat poaching is still a threat and it is thought that about 150,000 animals - mostly wildebeest and varieties of antelope - are trapped and killed every year.
Tourists tread a fine line in these plains. Clearly, too many in their 4WDs would be detrimental, but the money they bring in funds patrols and supports communities living near the game parks. Conservation is the main priority of the tour company CC Africa (the CC stands for Conservation Corporation) - well, that and a good gin and tonic.
Quite how they manage to provide such luxury at their camp in a remote area of the Serengeti, with no running water or mains electricity, is beyond me. It's a moving camp, meaning they move across the plains several times a year. "When the animals migrate, so do we," says the manager, Asheri, a man whose white shirt and trousers are always spotless (by comparison, my safari shorts, shirt and hat were constantly stained and crinkled. At the time, I thought I looked like Meryl Streep in Out of Africa. It was only when I saw the photos afterwards that I realised I looked more like Steve Irwin.).
