This seasonal swamp of 3,810 sq. km, is one of the finest areas in the country for big game photography, attracting a vast population of wildlife. The landscape, with its parched alkaline pan and strange mirages, is everywhere dominated by the glistening majestic snowcap of Mount Kilimanjaro on the back ground, a extinct volcano of 5,894 m. known as the "roof of Africa". This is Maasai country, a proud nomadic people, who have lived in harmony with nature for centuries. Game viewing is an adventure in this park, with lion, cheetah and buffalo almost an assured sight and hosts of antelope, zebra and other small creatures of the wild. Bird life is abundant. But the most impressive inhabitants of this arid landscape are the elephants, moving in large columns in their daily peregrination to the water.