Not overrated, but frequently oversold on one specific promise: that you will definitely witness a dramatic river crossing on a short trip timed to 'peak season.' You might not, even in late August — crossings depend on herd momentum building on a given day, and a two-night stay can easily miss the window entirely while a herd sits on the riverbank for a week deciding whether to cross. What is never overhyped is the sheer scale of the herds themselves: standing in the middle of tens of thousands of wildebeest and zebra stretching to the horizon, hearing the sound of that many hooves and grunting calls at once, is genuinely one of the most affecting wildlife experiences on the planet, crossing or no crossing. Our honest advice: if a river crossing specifically is your bucket-list image, build a longer stay (4+ nights) at a well-positioned camp during peak weeks and treat it as likely rather than guaranteed. If you simply want to witness the migration's scale, almost any month puts you among substantial numbers of animals somewhere in the ecosystem, and the pressure to time everything around one specific photograph mostly falls away.