The nurseries of Ndutu: where the great cats raise their young

For a few extraordinary months each year, the short-grass plains around Ndutu become the biggest nursery on earth. Half a million wildebeest calves are born here between December and March — most of them within the same three-week window — and where there is that much new life, the great cats gather to raise families of their own.

This is the season we love most. The light is soft, the grass is green from the short rains, and every marsh, kopje and lone acacia seems to hide a den. In a single February week we sat with three different cheetah mothers, a lion pride with cubs barely a month old, and a den of jackal pups learning to ambush one another.

The cheetah hour

Ndutu is arguably the best place in Africa to spend real time with cheetah. Not a glimpse — time. A mother with cubs must hunt almost daily, and on these open plains you can watch the whole story unfold: the long, flat-eared stalk, the explosion of speed, and afterwards the cubs called in from hiding with a soft chirp that sounds more like a bird than a big cat.

Our guides know many of these females across generations. They will position you quietly, engine off, well ahead of where the hunt is likely to unfold — because a cheetah moves at over a hundred kilometres an hour, and your vehicle should never have to.

When to come

Late December through March is calving season, with February the peak. It is also the quietest luxury season in the south — the crowds follow the river crossings in the north, leaving these plains, and their families of cats, to the patient few.