I saw the Lioness first, as she looked far into the distance crouched 40 feet away in the dry Kenyan Savannah patch. Almost invisible, she had been elusive through the best attempts of my safari driver and me for the last two and a half hours. The Lion emerged about 15 feet behind her, in his majestic gait and crouched about eight feet behind her. Within a few seconds, he stood up and walked up to the Lioness as she continued to survey the dazzle of zebras. Calvin, my Safari driver and guide, let out a knowing smile and said in his Kenyan accented English "She is just trying to spot the fattest one". I said," You mean the slowest one." He replied,"Same thing. Man these zebras are all fat." I looked at my mid-riff and decided that I should not continue talking and instead work on my camera.
While I would have loved to start earlier, we had started off at 7 AM. No time for breakfast, I picked up a couple of small pies and a couple of doughnuts from a supermarket. I bought extra batteries just in case my rechargeable ones gave away. We reached Nairobi National Park at 7:30 AM and picked up our Safari passes. There were three other cars waiting to check in at one of the seven gates that open into the park. As soon as I started wondering whether the tarmac was laid for all of the 100 odd kms of criss cross Safari tracks, the tarmac ended and gave way to hard red and black earth.
The first native of the park we met was an Ostrich. After that they just kept coming - Impalas, the Wild Beasts (Oke, as they are called in Masai), Gazelles, Zebras and dozens of types of birds that I do not know the names of, but they came in all colours. After about half hour we changed tracks as Calvin spotted a Giraffe at a distance. Somehow, everytime we kept getting closer the giraffe changed directions. I never got close enough for my camera. About the camera - I own some of the best equipment for a prosumer of photography. But, this biz trip was put together on short notice and I could not get my Nikkor Lenses (one of them a 450mm effective on the D70 that I own), cleaned. I am the only one I know whose lenses have fungi on the inner element. And since it is rainy season, I was told they would not risk opening it until seasons changed and the dry winter began. So, there I was with a 100 dollar SLR-like Fujifilm S5800 digicam, which had time and again proved itself for street, landscape and macro photography. But, I knew it was a crime or even a sin to not carry to a Kenyan safari the best of the equipment I had. I was counting on the bright sunlight to make up for any limitations that my digicam had. Anyway, c'est la vie.
Everytime we passed another private or hired Safari vehicle, the drivers exchanged notes about what each other had spotted. Even in the open wilderness of the grassland with sparse Acacia groves and very rare clumps of palm trees, it was difficult to predict where a specific type of land animal would be. It was about two hours into the Safari and we were getting eager to see a pride of three lions that we kept hearing about. We even chatted up a ranger with a gun and wearing camouflage fatigues. I did not have the whole day. I had a flight to catch in six and a half hours and a meeting (I know), to attend in three hours. So, we again changed routes.
Shortly, we spotted a tower of Giraffes and since we were driving into the sun, they appeared as tall silhouettes in a light blue background. For a second, it felt like being in Jurassic Park. I had never seen a dozen giraffes together, let alone this close in the wild. We were on our way to what they called the Hippo Pools, where sometimes the lions hung around. While we saw neither the hippos nor the lions, we had a close encounter with congress of baboons (I wonder if the connection between monkeys and the government is a deliberate one). An enterprising guard had set up a small refreshment bar of soft drinks in a shelter near the Hippo Pools. To draw crowds to his little store, he had displayed sun-dried and somehow cleaned up skeletal remains of several animals done to end by the predators. The most interesting and difficult to guess was that of an Ostrich. ( Continued in Part 2: Read here.)
While I would have loved to start earlier, we had started off at 7 AM. No time for breakfast, I picked up a couple of small pies and a couple of doughnuts from a supermarket. I bought extra batteries just in case my rechargeable ones gave away. We reached Nairobi National Park at 7:30 AM and picked up our Safari passes. There were three other cars waiting to check in at one of the seven gates that open into the park. As soon as I started wondering whether the tarmac was laid for all of the 100 odd kms of criss cross Safari tracks, the tarmac ended and gave way to hard red and black earth.
The first native of the park we met was an Ostrich. After that they just kept coming - Impalas, the Wild Beasts (Oke, as they are called in Masai), Gazelles, Zebras and dozens of types of birds that I do not know the names of, but they came in all colours. After about half hour we changed tracks as Calvin spotted a Giraffe at a distance. Somehow, everytime we kept getting closer the giraffe changed directions. I never got close enough for my camera. About the camera - I own some of the best equipment for a prosumer of photography. But, this biz trip was put together on short notice and I could not get my Nikkor Lenses (one of them a 450mm effective on the D70 that I own), cleaned. I am the only one I know whose lenses have fungi on the inner element. And since it is rainy season, I was told they would not risk opening it until seasons changed and the dry winter began. So, there I was with a 100 dollar SLR-like Fujifilm S5800 digicam, which had time and again proved itself for street, landscape and macro photography. But, I knew it was a crime or even a sin to not carry to a Kenyan safari the best of the equipment I had. I was counting on the bright sunlight to make up for any limitations that my digicam had. Anyway, c'est la vie.
Everytime we passed another private or hired Safari vehicle, the drivers exchanged notes about what each other had spotted. Even in the open wilderness of the grassland with sparse Acacia groves and very rare clumps of palm trees, it was difficult to predict where a specific type of land animal would be. It was about two hours into the Safari and we were getting eager to see a pride of three lions that we kept hearing about. We even chatted up a ranger with a gun and wearing camouflage fatigues. I did not have the whole day. I had a flight to catch in six and a half hours and a meeting (I know), to attend in three hours. So, we again changed routes.
Shortly, we spotted a tower of Giraffes and since we were driving into the sun, they appeared as tall silhouettes in a light blue background. For a second, it felt like being in Jurassic Park. I had never seen a dozen giraffes together, let alone this close in the wild. We were on our way to what they called the Hippo Pools, where sometimes the lions hung around. While we saw neither the hippos nor the lions, we had a close encounter with congress of baboons (I wonder if the connection between monkeys and the government is a deliberate one). An enterprising guard had set up a small refreshment bar of soft drinks in a shelter near the Hippo Pools. To draw crowds to his little store, he had displayed sun-dried and somehow cleaned up skeletal remains of several animals done to end by the predators. The most interesting and difficult to guess was that of an Ostrich. ( Continued in Part 2: Read here.)
No comments:
Post a Comment