African Safari – Day 2

Today was the big day!

Fuelled by the Hollywood film ‘Hatari’ in my childhood, wherein they showed a rhino being caught & years later when hunting took a back-seat to conservation and television channels like Discovery & National Geographic showed the splendor of wildlife, it had been one long yearning, a desire, a dream or a passion to visit Serengeti  and in a few hours , I will be there. The thought itself was so refreshing much like the last day in school before the summer holidays. When I expressed this to my guide Godson, he smiled and corrected me saying Hatari was shot not in Serengeti but in Arusha National Park. Oh, I said and he added Hatari means ‘Danger’ in Swahili.

8.30 AM: Breakfast done ( pineapples which melt in the mouth, pancakes, omelettes  & hot chocolate), tents dismantled and loaded on to the jeep along with all the cooking accessories plus packed lunch and we were ready to roll. It was a cold morning with rain heavier than a drizzle but lighter than a shower. We moved steadily to higher altitudes with greenery all round. Stopped at a vantage point to click pictures of Lake Manyara & the Lake Manyara National Park ( which I did not visit) far down below in the valley.

By 9.35 AM we were at the gate of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (of which the Ngorongoro crater is a small part). We would visit the crater while returning and now our goal was to pass through the Ngorongoro Conservation Area to reach the Serengeti National Park. A conservation area, I was told allows for human in-habitation while a National Park doesn’t. As for animals, they know no boundaries and can be sighted all through in the conservation area and not necessarily only inside the National Parks.

Formalities done, permits checked, bio-break taken, we moves along the narrow mud road along the rim of the Ngorongoro crater and soon we saw the changing landscape. Rolling plains, small mountains, valleys and Maasai tribesmen in their colorful red and blue clothing grazing their cattle with long sticks in their hands. Strangely enough, one could see domesticated cattle grazing a small distance away from zebras and wildebeest. 

The wealth of the Maasai is their cattle, which provides them not only meat and milk but also blood. Yes , blood! The Maasai have a sharp instrument which they prick their cattle with and the blood flowing out is collected and drunk. appears, it is not painful for the animal and they use some native herbs to seal the opening. A Maasai man can take as many wives as he can, with the only caveat being that he should offer a dowry to the bride’s family in the form of cattle.All this information, courtesy my guide Godson, a Maasai himself , but now a slick city-dweller. If you are wondering why no photos of the Maasai, the answer is simple — they demand money for being clicked, upwards of US $ 20,something I was not keen to pay.

Zebras, wildebeest, giraffes, buffalo, baboons and many more on the way as we soon reached the point where a diversion takes you to the Olduvai Gorge Museum, which is said to be the Cradle of Humankind. Two skulls were said to have been found here dating back 1.84 million years, which were the skulls of predecessors to the homo sapiens viz. Zinjanthropus & Homo habilis. I was more keen to see live animals than a museum and hence moved on.

Gradually, we saw fewer Maasais grazing their cattle and Godson informed that we were nearing the end of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area  & entering Serengeti. Soon enough, we were at the Serengeti National Park area where the tagline reads ‘ Serengeti shall never die’. ‘Amen’ was an instant reaction as I got clicked at the gate. The Serengeti National Park is spread over 12,000 square kilometers while the entire Serengeti ecosystem is over 30,000 square kilometers extending up to Masai Mara in Kenya.

The Naabi Gate entrance to the park is an 18 kilometer drive from this point.a game-drive even before entering the park. The word’ Serengeti’ roughly translated means ‘Endless Plains’ and I could see how apt the name was. Miles and miles of flat plains on both sides till the farthest horizons, interspersed with a few acacia trees — National Geographic or Discovery do not do justice to the enormity and beauty of this landscape. Thousands of zebras and wildebeest on both sides of the road, hundreds of thousands of them visible on the far horizons, the black specks being wildebeest and the white ones, zebras. Add to this the millions of them not visible to the naked eye and the wonders of nature made me think of God instantly -The Creator, & Serengeti became a place of worship.

We were at the Naabi Gate on Naabi Hill, where our permits were checked and we sat down at the eating place to have our packed lunch. Unlike in Tarangire, no monkeys at the eating-place but plenty of birds and on the ground I saw a mouse too. Toilet facilities are available here, but there is considerable room for improvement. Also there is a curio shop, which as in any tourist spot, is expensive. Around 2 PM, we were on the move again, actually inside the park. landscape was largely the same, flat plains with grass not too thick or tall, but some hills visible in the distance.

I was gazing from the open-top of the jeep and feeling the breeze on my face, when Godson stopped and whispered’ Cheetahs’. Where, I said and as I craned my neck, I could see two of them walking majestically on the road towards our jeep. They are males and brothers from the same litter, said Godson. Now they were just ahead of our jeep,eyes darting around, nostrils held up smelling prey  and then they casually ambled off into the slightly taller grass. The fastest animal on earth.  What a moment! Godson said I was blessed as cheetah-sightings are not very common. Guess they were moving towards the gate where the hordes of wildebeest and zebras were.

The dark clouds looked ominous and small droplets of rain were already coming down.We were wondering if the roof had to be closed. Yet we moved on along different trails with Godson saying we should be in Serenora campsite by 5 PM as tents had to be pitched and it could rain heavily later in the evening. The usual impalas and Thomson gazelles all round  and then on slightly lonely stretch, we saw this beauty sitting.As we watched, this female leopard moved slowly towards us, just besides our jeep and then into the grass. She was looking for prey, said my guide.

We watched her for quite a while wondering if she had sighted any small prey, but to no avail. Godson told me that as she was looking for prey desperately, maybe she had a cub somewhere close by. We went looking in one direction, then reversed back in the opposite direction and soon enough on a ledge of a small rocky hillock, we could see the cub lying down waiting for mummy to bring food. The camouflage was so good that I couldn’t make out the cub for quite a while but Godson’s trained sharp eyes picked it up in a jiffy.

The rain was getting heavier now as we closed the roof and drove towards our Serenora campsite. We were almost there, around a kilometer away when we spotted two lions in the distance ,one of them collared ( for scientific studies) enjoying a meal. Happy to have spotted lions but disappointed at the distance, we just looked for a while and moved on. Within a few minutes, we were in the camp.

As Nico served the evening tea with caramelized pop-corn in the camp, the tents were getting pitched by Godson. Dinner at 7.30 PM, it was said. This campsite had better facilities with a very large kitchen block, a dining block with lockers and plug-points inside them and at a little distance, the toilet and shower blocks. It was raining now and we had to make use of umbrellas and wind-cheaters and of course torches to get to the dining hall and toilets. Dinner done, crept into my sleeping- bag in the tent, checked my messages, sent a few and gradually drifted off to sleep, happy at the day’s sightings. Tomorrow will be a full day safari at Serengeti. The sound of rain beating down could be heard all night. In between, I was woken up by a sound, not thunder but something close to it……… it dawned on me ( in the middle of the night) that it was a lion’s roar up quite close. Maybe the same lions we had seen just before the campsite, I thought. The roars continued and I was too scared even to come out of my tent to go to the toilet. However by 4 AM, I ventured out to the toilet flashing my torch. Rains had stopped and it was a clear sky with stars twinkling at me. Lay down in my tent awaiting the morning safari at 7 AM.

Day 2 score: 4 of the Big Five