If you’ve never spent time in the wild, you must. It’s truly an exhilarating experience. The thrill of anticipating and unexpectedly spotting an animal in the wild, in its natural habitat, gives you so much joy, despite intruding on its personal space.
We have a tradition of spending my daughter’s birthdays with animals. We spent the first couple of her birthdays in a zoo, a few in small rainforests (more about this separately) and then last year, we were finally ready to graduate to the Mecca of wildlife - Africa.
We went to the very famous Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. Every time I have mentioned this to someone, the first thing they ask me is if we saw the “Great Migration”. So let me just get that out of the way here …
Yes, we did.
For those of you who have no clue what this is, please keep reading.
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This was our first trip abroad post pandemic, so I was a bit nervous about travelling so far after so long, especially since I’d spent the pandemic binge-watching Aircrash investigation videos. Also, it didn’t help that we were flying Ethiopian Airlines, which is a Boeing 737 max (yikes).
We were planning a pitstop in Ethiopia as we were anyway transiting through Addis Ababa, but that would mean taking two vaccines (polio, yellow fever) instead of one (yellow fever), that too from a specific government healthcare facility in India. This is just as bad as applying for a visa, defeating the purpose of going to a country with relaxed immigration restrictions for Indian tourists.
Anyway, we just flew straight to Arusha. With an e-visa, we were peacefully able to get in and out of immigration in no time. Also, the airport is quite tiny. As soon as we got out of the airport, we met with Astun, our chauffeur for the trip.
We were shepherded by him for the rest of our time in Tanzania, and this was by design. That’s how most of these trips to the Savanah are packaged. These guys are with you from the moment you arrive at the airport, till you are deposited back there, including driving you through the wild.
As we drove out of the airport towards Moshi, which is where we were to stay the night, one thing that stood out was the vegetation and climate of the region. It was dry and sparsely populated with bushes, shrubs and trees. I noticed tonnes of half built houses everywhere.
Astun explained to us that people take several years to complete building their houses, because they don’t have money. Given how much we’d paid for our trip, it felt bizarre that all this money didn’t actually uplift the lives of people who lived there.
Moshi is quite a popular tourist destination with people who climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. We didn’t hike Kilimanjaro, but we saw it from our hotel and from our flight, while flying out of Tanzania. You’d never imagine it to be snow clad given how hot the region is, but it looks beautiful from the sky, like a lone piece of Toblerone.
Packed lunches and clean loos
Our first safari in the savanna was in the Tarangire National Park, which gets its name from the river in the Manyara region. When we got off the highway, and were driving towards the park, the road was lined with huts selling African art.
There’s literally nothing else around, and it makes you wonder why people choose to live where they live instead of in town. Astun explained that some people are super conservative and don’t want to “sell out” to the city life.
Just as we were about to enter the park, Astun took off the roof of our vehicle, converting it into a proper safari jeep. So, we stood on the floor of the jeep and enjoyed the view. We kept driving around for hours, and we didn’t realise how time flew with all that anticipation and awe.
This park is known for elephants and baobab trees, and we saw plenty of them. Around mid-day, we stopped over for a packed lunch at one of the lunch spots in the park. This is where everyone gathers for lunch, and as you can imagine, this is also where you get to hang out with the monkeys.
These packed lunches seemed like a pretty standard affair, everyone was carrying them. It was pretty basic but super filling - a piece of roast chicken, boiled egg, sandwich/ quiche, banana, apple, cake and a fruit juice.
As Indians, you do feel a little depressed after a couple of days of not eating hot lunches, but it works perfectly well for Europeans or Americans (majority of the tourists) who consider a hot meal a luxury.
I was truly amazed to learn from a colleague once in London about how he stocks up on pre-prepped meals that are about to cross their “best before dates” from Tesco (because they’re cheaper) and chuck them into the freezer to last him a week.
That’s when I realised why living in London as an immigrant felt more “taxing” for me than for a local. We are a pampered lot. If you want to get a glimpse of how an average traditional Indian household eats, watch The Great Indian Kitchen.
Anyway, back to Tanzania.
These picnic spots also have toilets. They are super clean and well maintained, it’s amazing. For all the entrance fee they charge you for entering these parks, they do a stellar job of maintaining them. I’ve not seen anything like this in India till date.
After our safari, we headed to Karatu and spent the night in Kudu Lodge. It was relatively cooler and greener than Moshi, being at an elevation. For dinner that night, we ate local food, but in a fine dining restaurant meant for tourists. Nevertheless, we really enjoyed the hot meal - ugali, some vegetable stews, greens and some meats.
We were woken up to a symphony by birds - the music they create is amazing. It’s addictive and memorable. The sound is still stuck in our heads, can you believe it?
From here, we headed to Serengeti, which gets its name from the Masai word, siringet, for a land that runs forever without an end in sight.
Seeing the Savannah, not on Nat Geo
Back when I learnt about the African Savannah in geography class, it was only this vague notional concept. Even when I would see it on Nat Geo, it always felt like something from another planet, like in a movie - not real.
But when we entered Serengeti, and kept driving through it for miles and miles, it suddenly hit me - I was in the wild. The absolute wild. It was surreal. It was an out of world experience to be in the middle of the virgin savannah.
In the middle of the grasslands, we spotted a bunch of giraffes, just eating grass, doing their thing. Having only seen giraffes in zoos before, where they are outnumbered by the people gawking at them, it felt bizarre having them gawk at us.
Did you guys know that the patterns on a giraffe’s body varies from one giraffe to the next, kind of like human fingerprints. It’s also quite a sight watching them run across a massive open field, something you’ll never see in a zoo.
Another animal that feels too unreal to see in the wild is the zebra. In fact, we saw tens of thousands of them, to the point where they stop being exotic. We even saw some of them crossing the path ahead of us (zebra crossing, get it?).
But what made the experience surreal was seeing a mixed group of animals together - elephants, giraffes and zebras all grazing next to one another. It felt unnatural given how we are conditioned by zoos. Except, it’s the zoos that are unnatural.
Even schools are like that. They make you believe that your friends must be from the same age group (or at best one grade above or below) or race (depending on the school you go to). But that notion gets shattered once you become a fully grown adults, no?
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I mentioned that we saw the Great Migration, which is essentially wildebeests and zebras moving in large numbers (even larger than Indians who migrate to Canada) from Tanzania to Kenya and back. About 1.5M wildebeests and 0.25M zebras migrate from Serengeti to Masai Mara every year in search of water and greener pastures.
So, at any given point of time, you’ll see massive lines of these animals like people in an Indian wedding reception queue. It’s amusing to watch these guys cross streams because they’re very scared of being caught by crocodiles that patiently wait for them.
They keep walking slowly towards the stream, pause for a little prayer and suddenly run across the stream at top speed. It’s like watching people running over hot coal during religious festivals in temples.
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While on a Safari, you don’t encounter other humans for hours, except if someone’s spotted a “big cat”. We saw a line of jeeps some distance away, and so we decided to go investigate. It was a bunch of lions taking a siesta after a nice meal.
When cats are full, they don’t care about anything else, even if they’re otherwise wild. It felt strange to be right next to them and not feel scared.
Apparently people go to Africa to see five big animals - lions, leopards, rhinos, buffaloes and elephants. But we found so many other animals equally fascinating. For instance, the hippos.
The whole savannah smells of nothing. Except, when you are approaching a hippo pool. Water from the rains gets collected in the Savannah, and hippos lay half submerged in them - to cool off. It’s a beautiful sight - like smooth floating rocks in water, except the whole place smells horrendous.
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After a really long day of animal spotting, we came to our tent in Osinon Camp, right in the middle of the Savannah. We had zebras, gazelles and giraffes peacefully walking around our tents. It was really insane to be spending a couple of nights there.
Our tents were in a row with the dining tent at the mid-point of the line. We sat by the fire in front of the dining tent with drinks and watched the sun set behind the savannah. It was all very relaxing until we were done with dinner.
It was pitch dark outside. Our host escorted us back to our tent, she had a torch with her that she kept flashing in all directions as she walked us. The short walk to our tent was probably the longest walk I’ve ever been on. We were in the absolute wild, with nothing between us and a wild animal, that could pounce on us anytime.
Even as I walked to breakfast from my tent the next morning, I was still nervous about coming face to face with an animal. It didn’t help that Astun told us that he heard some lions roaring during the night. I thought he was kidding, until we saw them very close to our tent the same evening.
It was a pack of 9 lions - 6 adults and 3 cubs.
Astun casually assured us that they would make a kill that night. Again, I didn’t take him seriously. But they did. Early next morning, we saw two half eaten wildebeests in the same spot, and lions lying down under trees nearby. The blood was so fresh, you could see the fumes from the warmth.
I suppose spending 20 years of your life driving through the Savannah gives you some understanding of who is hungry when? He knew exactly where we would spot the lions, leopards or cheetahs - as if he’d staged the whole thing for us.
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Since the whole trip felt a bit sheltered, when Astun asked us if we wanted to meet with some local Masai people, we enthusiastically agreed. He took us to one of the Masai villages in Serengeti.
It was definitely the most unnatural part of the trip.
They had a whole charade prepared for all visitors - where they welcomed us with a song and dance, showed us how they make fire from sticks, took us to their local school, made the children recite the alphabet and numbers, explained how their homes are built and tried to sell us jewellery and souvenirs they’d made locally.
As we were leaving, we paid some sort of an unspoken fee for the show to the chief, who essentially heads a large family, that is a whole village. These villages seem to thrive predominantly on tourism, at least during the “season”. But they don’t pitch it to you like that, because then you wouldn’t deem that a “local” experience.
These settlements aren’t permanent, they move every few months depending on the vegetation around them. I saw some of them walking for miles in the hot sun on their own. I really struggled to understand why they preferred their lives here in the middle of nowhere versus moving to cities.
But as Astun had said, they’re conservative and also they supposedly enjoy a better quality of life in the wild versus in the city where they’d have to do odd jobs and live in small houses without their families.
Ngorongoro
While human settlement (Masai only) is allowed in the Serengity, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area next door is inhabited only by animals. This is in the Ngorongoro Crater, a large volcanic caldera.
This, and Serengeti, are both UNESCO world heritage sites, and rightfully so. I felt truly blessed to be able to witness such diverse fauna and I really hope it remains this way for generations to come.
This crater is home to the Black Rhinoceros, which is critically endangered. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any of them, and I am not surprised given that there are basically less than 15 of them in the region.
Astun took us to several spots where we watched lions walk across large fields on their own. They looked so majestic with their manes swaying to the beat of their swagger. It really hits you as to why a lion is called king of the jungle.
Even watching lone tuskers was a pleasure. They are so comfortable in their solitude, unlike humans who prefer to live in communities. Although, my favourite part of this entire trip had to be watching cheetahs.
One time, we saw this Cheetah perched on top of an anthill watching a large battalion of wildebeests and zebras walking across. As we stood there watching, I kept thinking that it will start chasing them and catch one of them. But no, it didn’t. He kept looking, doing nothing.
I thought may be it’s like that experiment Gandhi ji used to do sleeping naked with women to strengthen his sexual resolve? Then, Astun told us that cheetahs prefer to hunt smart - they don’t like to expend their energy unnecessarily. They only make a kill when they’re hungry and when it’s easy to catch a prey.
This is because they can sprint upto 100Kms/ hour, but only over short distances. They have more misses than wins, but that doesn’t stop them from doing what they do well. Later in the trip, I saw a mommy Cheetah hunt like this while her cubs looked on. Even though she missed the prey, it was a pleasure to watch. I could relate to it.
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As we made our way back from the wild into the city, ready to head back home, I saw posters of a woman clad in a hijab all along through one stretch of the road.
It was Samia Suluhu Hassan, the president of Tanzania, who also happens to be the first female president of the country, and only the third female head of state in East Africa. Astun said that Tanzania is among the more peaceful countries in the region.
Since there are over 120 tribes in the country, they are less likely to gather enough quorum to create large scale damage unlike in Kenya, Rwanda or Burundi where there are few dominant tribes.
So, I guess, there isn’t a singular Tanzanian culture or experience either, much like in India. So trying to experience something “local” wouldn’t exactly have been representative of their entire culture anyway.
As we were driving back to the city, it kept raining intermittently. When the rain had stopped, I saw people scoop up water from potholes on the highway, including little children.
Astun told us that they filter it and use it because water is scarce and expensive, and lugging large cans of water for miles is hard, even if you could afford it.
Having had a rather luxurious holiday with never having to worry about water (we were asked to use mineral water even to brush our teeth in the tent) made me feel strange - like I was in a different Tanzania, not the one that these people lived in.
But as I said in the chapter about Sri Lanka, countries that are dependent on tourism do a stellar job of shielding you from the harsh reality of their own people.