You are collected from camp in the dark, around 4:30am, and driven to the launch site while the balloon is inflated in the headlights. Take-off is at first light. For roughly an hour you drift wherever the wind takes you, sometimes a few metres above the grass and sometimes a thousand feet up, with the whole Serengeti opening out below and no sound at all except the burner.
It is the only way to grasp the scale of the place. In migration season you float over herds running to the horizon; the rest of the year it is the shape of the land itself — rivers, kopjes, and the shadows of giraffe stretched long across the plain.
You land in a field somewhere, the crew arrives, and a full champagne breakfast is laid out under an acacia with white linen. Then a game drive back to camp. Flights operate in the central and southern Serengeti and in the north near the Mara River, cost roughly USD 599 per person, and must be booked and paid well in advance — there are only so many baskets. Minimum age is usually seven and there is a weight limit; flights are cancelled for wind or rain and refunded in full.