The presence of lions in a game park or private reserve doesn't guarantee spectacular sightings. Safaris are serendipitous by nature. The trick is to pick a camp with an active resident lion pride (you can vet camps by reading safari companies' monthly wildlife reports online) or to time your safari to a natural event, such as the annual wildebeest migration in Tanzania and Kenya. To book a lion-viewing trip, consult Africa Adventure Company's Mark Nolting, of the guidebook Africa's Top Wildlife Countries (800-882-9453; africa-adventure.com). Africa specialist Cherri Briggs, of Explore, Inc., arranges custom expeditions where guests can participate in taking samples of blood and other genetic material alongside veterinarian Michael Briggs, her brother, who conducts lion-population research from a base camp in northwestern Botswana's Kwando River Concession (888-596-6377; exploreafrica.net). In Botswana, which has the advantage of varied habitats and the absence of biting tsetse flies, the preferred time for game viewing is the May–October dry season, when animals concentrate around water holes and are easy to spot in the sparser, yellowed grass. In the December–March rainy season, animals disperse and hide in the greenery.

Prices quoted are for the current high season (May–October), and include all meals and camp activities such as game drives and guided walks.

Botswana
Botswana's varied landscape—desert, floodplain, and riverine forest—make it the best country in Africa for viewing lions because prides can behave so differently from camp to camp due to the quirks of their micro environments. The country also has many luxury camps in large, isolated private concessions. The six-tented Duba Plains stands out because of regular sightings of what staff euphemistically term "lion-buffalo interaction"—i.e., kills (wilderness-safaris.com; $645 per person per day). The newly revamped Vumbura Plains, also managed by Wilderness Safaris, is stylish and comfortable. Fourteen thatched lofts, linked by wooden walkways, have sunken lounges, private decks, and plunge pools ($845 per person per day). Wilderness Safaris' Web site has monthly game observation reports from each of its camp managers—useful for selecting an accommodation based on the likelihood of seeing a particular species. Dereck and Beverly Joubert have taken over the former hunting concession in which Zibalianja Camp is located, and have restricted the 320,000 acres to photo safaris only. With four guest tents and seven staff, "Zib" has a unique and friendly Swiss Family Robinson–in–Africa vibe. In addition to lions, it's a good base for viewing rare cheetahs and wild dogs (267-625-0505; linyanti.com; $420–$690 per person per day).

Tanzania
Serengeti National Park is Africa's other classic lion country. The grassland savanna has spectacular open vistas and is home to Africa's last great herds of wildebeests, zebras, and other herbivores, which are stalked by large numbers of lions and other predators. Accommodations range from portable tents, to permanent luxury tented camps, to large hotels with swimming pools. Apart from the question of how up close and personal you want to get to lions (known to poke their heads into portable tents), timing and location should be the main factors in selecting Serengeti accommodations.

In an isolated corner of the southern Serengeti, Kusini Camp has nine permanent tents and is an excellent base for the wildebeest-calving season, from January through April (27-21-809-2180; ecoafrica.com; $285–$490 per person per day). Sayari Camp is a mobile operation that follows the migration; from June through September, its eight tents sit near the Mara River, just outside the park boundary—which means guests are not subject to park bans on walking safaris and night drives ($380–$522 per person per day). Both camps must be booked through a travel agent in the United States; Africa Adventure Company is a good option (see above).

You can spot lions at almost any point during the annual migration cycle, but the most dramatic—and, yes, gory—scenes occur during February, when hundreds of thousands of female wildebeests calve en masse in the southern Serengeti, and in June and July, when herds cross the western Serengeti's Grumeti River. Columns of nervous wildebeests mass for days before making panicked crossings of this crocodile-filled barrier, and lions haunt the banks, lying in ambush or waiting to pick off injured animals and lost youngsters. The scenario is similar in late October, when the herds returning south from Kenya's heavily touristed Masai Mara cross the Mara River back into Tanzania.

Lodging
You can find cutting-edge lion studies and debates at felidae.org, the World Conservation Union's lion-specialist division, and at lionresearch.org, biologist Craig Packer's project at the University of Minnesota. Written 30 years ago, George Schaller's The Serengeti Lion is the classic scientific (though highly readable) account of lion behavior (University of Chicago Press, $35). Joy Adamson's Born Free memoirs, written in the '60s, are interesting in retrospect because of the poaching and hunting of human-imprinted predators (Pan MacMillan, $15–$17).