Kenya

 Africa it is !! 💃💃🦁🦓🦒🐘🦏🦛🐆

So this October we planned the trip to AFRICA with the most fun group. Here’s the happy troupe ready for the adventure.

In California ☀️

En route

And me celebrating that the middle seat is empty so we can stretch our legs 😜

A 22 hours flight with layover in turkey later, we finally reached Nairobi. A not so short immigration and SIM card / currency exchange later we were ready to start the day.

Our chauffeur from the four points Sheraton took us to the hotel and we were welcomed by breakfast buffet at 5 am! God bless the hotel for early breakfast coz we were famished.

Thankfully omelette can’t go wrong, and with fruits, pav bhaji (yep. Thanks to huge population of gujaratis in Kenya) fruits, juices and coffee later, we headed to our rooms to finally relax. Phew. Can’t wait to beat the jet lag and get going.

But before, we explored our rooms and were very excited to discover that we could see one of the boundaries of Nairobi national park from our room. Archana with her keen eye, observed an antelope and we ended up learning how to use binoculars. Very soon, I observed a monkey like creature seated on top of a huge hoarding. Our excitement went downhill pretty quick when Manish recognized it to be a person fixing something on top of the hoarding 🙈

Nevertheless, we were very excited for what was to come and slept some, being tired from the journey.

A very uneasy sleep later, we were ready to have lunch, and my husband for spa 😀 with a lunch buffet and amazing view, we spent some good time chit chatting while Shivendra enjoyed a spa

While the lunch left us with a bitter taste, the view was lovely.

Now with jet lag on our heels, we all decided to spend the evening in lobby and encourage each other to stay awake 😜

We explored the rooftop swimming pool which was quite a site but not a very great hanging spot given it was bright and sunny. So we headed downstairs to the lobby.

Here’s shivendra with a spa happy face

While seated in the lobby, I learnt that ‘jayanti gir gayi’ 😂 the joke is now an inside one and we will stay quiet about it to others 🤫😂

Come evening, we were ready to go for a good dinner and chose Ethiopian at abysinia. While the food was great, especially the hot lentils and egg curry, the ambience left a lot to be desired.

And now with stuffed faces, we headed to hotel to finally sleep!! Zzzzz….

NAIROBI to NAIVASHA 

Next day, we had an early morning breakfast (it was easy to get up early as all of us were too jet lagged to sleep well) and waited eagerly for our guide from African keys travel company. He promptly arrived at 7 am and greeted us with ‘jambo’ (welcome in Swahili) and namaste. ☺️ His name was Martin and oddly enough asked for our favorite colors, only to offer us some tour company’s merchandise (bottle) in the color closest to our favorite colors. Not a bad token from the tour company ☺️ Would have loved a pink bottle but later thinking about his scrunchy face on hearing my favorite color as pink, it was funny as he didn’t have a pink bottle and I ended up with a black color one instead. Shivendra got a blue one and of course that’s also mine now!! 😜

Here’s our ride for next 6 days & our guide Martin

Here’s a picture of the happy group ready for the adventure of a lifetime. Woohoo!!

On a side note, some areas of Nairobi city sees terrible traffic. Our guide Martin assured us that we were VVIPs and that we will skip the traffic. Thanks to the expressway to outside the city, we actually did. ☺️

Here’s a quick look at Nairobi city

We were headed to Naivasha, first for a boat ride and then the lake Naivasha sopa lodge.

The journey was made fun by our chat of spotting goats, donkeys and few monkeys too. And of course, how can I forget the discovery of ‘tyre gadi’ which is a cart sitting on tyres and pulled by an animal. It sounded funny to me as I had never heard this vehicle referred to as such, but shivendra was the wise one who made us smarter with this knowledge 😀

Aforementioned ‘tyre gadi’ ☺️

Enroute it started raining and made us worried about the boat ride. The view was beautiful nevertheless.

But thankfully as we got closer to Naivasha, our luck soared and we landed in the resort completely dry. This lodge provided us access to the boat ride and was a stop before the Lake naivasha sopa lodge. Here’s a look

Entrance of the resort

Here’s me waving at the camera like some politician 😜

Interior of the resort with some beautiful sticker on the floor

Here we go. All strapped and ready for the boat ride

View of the lake from resort

But before we embark on the boat ride, our guide brought our attention to two hippos 🦛🦛 munching veggies at one section of the resort.

View of the hippos and the lake :)

We enjoyed seeing them up and close but realized to our horror that they were not enclosed as one side of their pen was open to the water. This meant that the hippos choose to come out of the water to feed on the veggies perhaps left by resort staff.

What this also meant that there were hippos in the water. This was very clear as we started the boat ride 🙈🙈 There were families of hippos just lounging in the water close to our boat and as the boat got close to them, our boat guide made sure we didn't disturb them. Thankfully the hippos lounge in shallow water and as we got away from the shore, our anxiety subsided.

Just casually hanging out with family 😂

Lake view

And here we are

Now comes the breathtaking part. The lake was just out of the world!! We were mesmerized by its vastness and its beauty and were happy and content with this day already. The slight showers made it more fun 😂

Yours truly shielding herself from rain and ahem.. succeeding?! 😂

Lake view

However, our boat guide had other fun plans. He stopped the boat in middle of lake, bought freshly caught fish and later went on to show how by whistling, drawing attention of a black and white eagle he could have the eagle swoop the fish from the lake.

Here’s the prey….

….and here’s the predator

Our boat guide took us near an island and we couldn’t contain our excitement when we saw antelopes, then zebra (our first sighting of zebra. Yay!!) and first glance of ‘was it a giraffe?’ And ‘yay!! It was a giraffe. We went around half of the island and spotted numerous zebras and were confused a little by why they simply stand and stare into a distance. Weird. But our first sighting of these animals excited us to no bounds.

Antelopes

 

Zebras and Giraffe!!

We also spotted some very pretty pelican pods and then headed back to the shore whilst enjoying the view of the lake.

Pelicans marching ( for some reason 😜)

On our way back, we were back to shallow waters which was the abode of many a families of hippos. At one spot we spotted as many as 8 hippos almost on top of each other. Guess ‘family that lounges together, stays together?!’ 🤔

The aforementioned family 😀

We left with the feeling that you can capture the pictures but some things just cannot be captured in pics, and that they have to be enjoyed in person. Just the whole vastness of the lake and the quiet we felt on the boat was amazing. Sigh!! Felt sad to leave but of course not showing in the pictures here 😜

Upon arriving at the shore, we continued our journey to lake Naivasha sopa resort.

On the way we spotted a deer looking animal that is called dik dik. We got excited to spot new animals ☺️

On reaching the hotel at Naivasha, we were given a brief guideline on timing of meals and that we should request for a guide each time we went to and fro the reception and our rooms. So this was a first and we were a bit concerned about the animals, so much so that this was mentioned upfront. In any case, we started to our rooms.

Now the entrance to the guest rooms was covered with tall cactus trees and looked like something from another world.

We walked ahead and discovered the layout of the rooms which increased our excitement.

The fact that we had to cross many rooms to reach ours, was a bit of a bummer. But the rooms and the view made up for it. Also, did I mention we saw zebras enroute 😜 zebras were just casually strolling very close to us. Our boys stopped many a times to shoot them and we just marveled at zebra’s patterns and our proximity to them. It was amazing.

While in our room, we got out of the balcony and while admiring the view, saw a giraffe right there! Now what else can you ask for a view. It was surreal. We also spotted a waterbuck very closely.

Here’s a zoom-in

Then we had lunch buffet and here’s a preview of what we ate.

We were told that we could request a guide to take us around the property and show us the lake view and the animals. Post lunch we decided to lounge in the room and leave for the tour around 4 pm. Thanks to jet lag, all of us slept over the alarm and missed the tour. Not that I regret it. I really needed to sleep 😴

In the evening, we went to the reception to dinner and enjoyed the many food options that included Indian food!

After stuffing our faces, we explored the gift shop and learnt a few Swahili words from on the gift items 😜 so kaburi is welcome, Asante is thank you and jambo is hello.

Now completely exhausted, we slept like logs.

While checking out the rooms next morning, Archana even spotted a money sitting in their balcony ☺️ This Africa adventure continued to surprise us.

Next day, we had breakfast and started for Nakuru.

The guest rooms definitely raised the bar on rooms and we were excited to learn what was in store for us in Nakuru!

A quick note on zebras. By end of our stay and next day we had seen so many zebras that we started associating it with cows coz they were everywhere and we had stopped hyping it as much as we had done earlier 🙈 also, before I end this chapter, I want to mention how we got a great farewell from Naivasha by its giraffe that got extremely close to us as we headed out the resort.

Naivasha to Nakuru

As we started our journey to Nakuru, the weather was bright and sunny which was perfect for a drive and lifted our spirits compared to the previous day when it threatened to rain anytime.

On the way we spotted many monkeys lounging around the road which was our first sighting of a huge group of monkeys in the same place. After some drive, we crossed the area near lake elementatia. As lake Nakuru had a lot more to offer, we continued our journey.

Entrance to lake Nakuru national park

As we entered lake Nakuru, we were welcomed by terrible road or rather semblance of a road. we knew that the roads will get terrible at some point especially at Mara, but we weren’t prepared for it this soon. A very harrowing what felt like 3 hours later we spotted lake Nakuru. Now the reason we were there was the fact that you could see throes of flamingoes on this lake. But at the outset we saw a lot of zebras. After seeing many zebras up and close at Naivasha resort, we had gotten immune to it. 😋 on the way to Nakuru lake we also spotted some giraffes.

As we got closer to the lake, we started seeing groups of white birds at the shore of the lake. We had started getting excited that we had started seeing flamingoes, only for the driver to clarify that they were group of pelicans. 🙈 talk about mistaken identity. I had gone so far as seeing pink colors on their neck. So well that was something funny.

Nevertheless seeing so many pelicans was a treat by itself. However, as we continued driving, we finally reached the end of shore that had the flamingoes. This was a sight to behold. Hundreds of pink and white flamingoes dotted the lake and we couldn’t take our eyes off them. We spent quite some time there and eventually with great resistance, continued our journey to Nakuru sopa lodge.

The pink was beyond beautiful. Look at it shimmering in the lake

As we continued forward to Nakuru sopa resort we drove on terrible roads. This was a precursor to what was to be experienced in Mara, fondly known as ‘Mara massage’ 😅 I was very curious on how the hotel supplies are delivered so high on a hill where sopa lodge was located, on such terrible road. Very hard work and impressive indeed.

On the way we spotted many giraffes and zebras.

Eventually after braving the roads, we reached the sopa lodge. The lobby itself was beautiful and the rooms even better. Each room was a separate tent like structure and the view from the room towards lake Nakuru was breathtaking. This is in fact an understatement. We were looking forward to evening when the Nakuru city would be lit up and the view from our rooms will be heavenly.

View of Nakuru lake from our rooms! breathtaking indeed!

Some lunch and shenanigans later, we left for our afternoon game drive. For afternoon game drive, our guide Martin spotted a lion sitting in the bushes (kudos to Martin for this, as the lion was sitting in dried grass and was very inconspicuous). As this was our first sighting of lion, we took a ton of pictures and were very excited. Spot the lion in first picture below if you can :)

Eventually we moved on to spot other animals. We saw Giraffes very closely which itself was amazing. Rhinocerous is one of the big 5 animals in Kenya and is difficult to spot as there aren’t many left. To our luck, we spotted some black and four white (in a different location) rhinos the same day. They were Magnificent.

One of the ways to learn about presence of an Animal is to head towards any location where the tour cars are spotted. We did just that after sometime, and were rewarded with a view of a leopard sleeping on a branch in a tree. While we couldn’t see it clearly, a hazy view was itself rewarding. Spot the leopard if you can.

Also spotted a troop of baboons nearby.

Once back to our resort, we strolled around. See the pool sparkling and how we learnt some Swahili :)

Archana, Manish and we got adjacent rooms and could even converse through the balconies.

On returning to the room, a little later, I started noticing many small insects in the room. Shivendra called the reception for help with this and they arrived with bug sprays. The sprays did not work at all and we were planning our next steps to help with it. Suddenly we heard Archana scream from the adjacent room and learnt that as she was wearing her shoes, she felt something inside it. When she tried to clear up the inside of the shoe, a tiny snake escaped from it. 😕 Manish called and informed us of the same and we waited for service staff to help with it. They removed the snake and confirmed that it was not poisonous, but we were too scared to continue in the same rooms. Our rooms were changed and the new rooms were completely clear of any bugs. We heaved a sigh of relief but were too worried to leave any bags unlocked for the fear of bugs. So this definitely put a dampener on our spirits. We were very surprised at how well Archana handled this experience. Brave girl indeed!!

Next day we started afresh and had no experience of bugs in the new rooms (thank goodness). While the view from these rooms was not as great, it was beautiful nevertheless.

We had our breakfast and started for the game drive. This drive offered us the best view of Giraffe in the entire Trip. We were barely 10 ft from the giraffes and saw them munching on the leaves on a nearby tree. This was just out of the world experience.

Despite no heart to move on, we eventually did. And funnily enough, we saw a ‘zebra crossing ‘ (pun intended) 😅

One of our destinations today was a waterfall in the Nakuru national park. Here is a purview.

The last sighting for the day was seeing a lion family from a relatively close distance with one of the lioness wearing a tracker around her neck. This was surprising indeed. But as she was included in the family, the tracker didn’t make any difference to her relationship with her family, that was good. I say this because it was possible that other family members might find her different and abandon her, which they didn't.

This was from very far, so the video is unclear as you can see

After these sightings, we continued our journey to Masai Mara.

Nakuru to Masai Mara day 1

On the way to Mara, Martin stopped at a coffee and souvenir shop where the coffee was just how you would get anywhere in the US. Bonus points for serving masala tea which was good too. Driving ahead we stopped at one of biggest curio shop with great collection of souvenirs. If we had time and this shop were in Nairobi, (to avoid carrying more than 15 kg on our flight to Diani) we would have definitely spent all our remaining money here.

As we drove towards Mara, most of the road was good and we relaxed for a while. But as we got closer to our resort, we crossed some pretty rough patches of road, especially a 20 km stretch that made a shake of our insides. But, eventually we thrived and reached entrance to Mara. Our guide bought us the pass to enter Mara, while we were accosted by many women trying to sell beads jewellery and wooden animals to us. Our guide had already warned us to neither take their pictures as they will ask for money, nor buy anything from them if we didn’t want to haggle and have a barrage of women try to sell their items too!

Once past the gate we continued our journey towards our camp Figtree. Road was still rough but as our camp was closer to the gate, it took us roughly 30 min. When we reached there, we were very impressed by the beauty of this resort nestled between huge trees. We entered the resort through a lovely bridge built over Talek river. It was a very nice start to our vacation in Masai mara.

  

We had reached Mara at around 1 pm and headed straight for lunch and to get ready for our afternoon game drive by 4 pm despite being very tired.

Our spirit persisted and continued on to game drive. We were rewarded by a small herd of elephants and their babies. It was our first sighting of an elephant and we were very excited to see one in the wild.

Also, while we weren’t expecting it, we saw an ostrich too which was quite far from our location but huge nevertheless. Wasn't even aware that Mara had ostriches. So a pleasant surprise.

We returned tired to our resort and after having dinner, slept like logs. Here's a look at our beautiful resort.

Mara day 2

Our day started very early with a breakfast at 6:30 am. But as soon as we came out of our rooms for breakfast, we were greeted to amazing fragrance of the forest as our resort was amongst green belt of Masai Mara. Loved loved this welcome of the day.

Today’s plan was pretty packed with a completely day tour (7 am-5 pm). As we headed into the Mara, we saw 10 hot air balloons in the air. It was a lovely sight this early in the morning. This made us excited for the next day when we had planned for a hot air balloon ride.

As we headed further inward in search of game/animals we saw a baby topi that almost look like it was born that day. Baby animals do bring out a softer side of anyone 😍 what made this unique was that we spotted two ostriches right behind the topi and one of them sprinted towards us. I doubt that folks look for ostrich in Mara but it was nice to spot it nevertheless as they are difficult to come by in zoos.

Also boars were pretty much roaming throughout the savannah.

We had been in our game drive for an hour and a half when we spotted the biggest catch of the day. A pride of lions that had 11 lions (lioness) including babies! That was quite a sight and we spent a lot of time taking pictures and be in awe of the sight. What made it a bit uncomfortable was the fact that we could see some of the lioness munching on what looked like a zebra’s leg. So it was a bit weird seeing it, especially when we had gotten used to seeing zebras graze all around in every park we had been to. This pride had only 1 lion and all other lioness and cubs raised in attention when this lion made a noise. That showed the hold a main lion can have on its pride. It was something to watch.

view of the pride of lions and jeeps with so many people enjoying the view

We then continued our search for other animals and very quickly spotted two lions where one was asleep having eaten buffalo (?) and other lounging in the sun. The bones of the buffalo were exposed and if the lion ate it , no wonder it was asleep 🙈

We continued and spotted a few boars and vultures. On a side note, boars were the only animal that sprinted very fast on seeing the vehicle from far. Even their babies ran and were super cute.

Continuing from yesterday we saw ton of anthills that were Majestic in their size and very very impressive as some of them apparently reached almost 6 ft!!

As we headed further, we spotted a herd of wild elephants with 4 babies and 1 adult. Watching the younger one pluck grass using his trunk and forward legs was the cutest. We spent a lot of time observing them and then as they headed into the forest, we turned to continue our game drive as well. But not before taking in the memory of the cutest elephant baby.

Here's the baby elephant :) 

Park has a lot of hyenas and we spotted quite a lot of them. Mostly they were alone but found in packs as well. We discussed quite a bit on whether hyenas hunt by themselves or eat the scraps of kills by other animals. Apparently both are true as per our guide. What we all agreed on was that they looked sinister 😂

Now the animals in the antelope family confused us a lot. There is antelope, dik dik, topi, impala, gazelle and eland that is the largest of the antelope family (and perhaps more?). We spotted eland today, and quite a lot of topies and gazelle.

We continued onward to border of Kenya and Tanzania. The area that we visited had trees separating the border, and a small sign showing the same.

Anything beyond the hedge of trees is Tanzania

Learnt a bit about the two countries as well. Serengeti (Tanzania) is 5 times bigger than Masai Mara. This means that tourists have a hard time spotting animals in Serengeti. Kenyan govt has now put borders to deter the safari from Tanzania as their safari companies would bring their tourists to Mara and Kenyans would lose the revenue.

A short drive ahead, we met rangers who were installed by the govt. to walk us to a specific area near the Mara river. They carried guns to scare any animals that might attack during the walk. The ranger who accompanied us showed us approx. 20 hippos up and close and informed that hippos relax in water during the day and come up to graze at night. He also showed us the path they take to come into the jungle and that it is territorial. In the same walk we also spotted one huge and one small crocodile ( this was closer than my comfort. Brrrr)

Enjoy the view of Mara river

The hippo sighting in mara river continued when we were back to our vehicle, as we saw another four hippos with one sitting and napping outside which was a rare sight.

Another animal that we saw was a giraffe crossing the road, and some more hippos! It never fails to astonish me that we are in animal’s home and they have given us the privilege to observe them so closely. Bless our luck.

As we drove in search of animals, our driver educated us on why animals are not afraid or attack the vehicles even if tourists were very close. Apparently they have gotten used to these vehicles, but elephants still dislike sharp noises and may attack on hearing them. So we talked very softly when close to elephants.

We were looking forward to spot a cheetah as we had not encountered one in all our drives so far. As luck would have it we spotted something akin to a cheetah at a long distance and a close look through binoculars it was confirmed!! We raced to another location to see the cheetah closely and did find a spot which offered a better view. This was definitely the highlight of the day.

After a long time of staring at the cheetah owing to our excitement, we headed to a vista point that provided a great look of the Savannah.

One of the activities in a full day tour is taking breakfast or lunch in the Savannah. We had our lunch packed by the hotel, and we devoured the same. It was pretty decent with Hakka noodles, sandwich, fruits, yogurt and chips. Not bad at all.

At this time of the year, all wildebeest would have crossed into Serengeti looking for greener pastures. However we ended up spotting a few which was great as we ended up seeing all of key animals of Mara.

To go further ahead, we had a cross talek river at one point where there was barely any water. But as the road was not straightforward and had a huge dip, the car shook very very badly. The concept of Mara massage was never not true for us 😂 on top of this, our guide Martin was very keen on asking us to point the direction of our hotel. Guides identify regions of Mara by specific names and that’s how they coordinate. However, we had lost our sense of direction and Martin found it quite amusing 🙃 on a side note, guides help each and share information on where a certain animal was found through phone, radio and sometimes one on one while driving across from each other.

Part of today’s tour was to visit a Masai village. They had an entry free/ fixed donation of 25 USD per person which will be used for development of the community.

We were welcomed by a traditional dance by at least 20 men that gradually came closer to us (weak hearted could have gotten scared, as it is a different world altogether) and escorted us inside their village.

Also interestingly, Masai people tend to wear red or a variation of red. They adorn heavy bead based jewellery, even the men.

Continuing the welcome songs, as we entered the village, Archana and I were pulled into a traditional dance by women. It was awkward at first, but I think we did well. 😅 Men were also invited to a traditional dance by Masai men, and Manish was very sportive and performed very well. This was followed by a tradition where men hold a stick and try to jump as high as possible. Their belief is that the person who jumps the highest is most attractive and he would have either the pick of woman for marriage from another clan or have a very reduced dowry that is traditionally paid by men.

As we were brought into the village, we noticed that it was a round structure bordered by homes made by mud and might have roughly 50 houses. The center of the village had cows resting and there was quite a bit of cowdung strewn across the place. We saw chickens strolling about while we learnt that sheeps and goats were out grazing.

Looking at this community and their living we had lots of questions. Here’s what we learnt -

⁃ some men had part of their ear cut (cultural thing which is no longer done), and women have the earhole enlarged gradually with wood pieces. This practice is no longer undertaken. They continue to do circumcision for men but not FGM (female genital mutilation) anymore.

⁃ They learnt English through schools set up by US and Canadians citizens many years back, and folks who are now adults were the first students in the school. But now having learnt English, they run the schools themselves.

⁃ The accessories which everyone wear are made by the women but beads sourced from Nairobi.

⁃ If men want to go to city they can but our Masai guard mentioned that irrespective of where he goes (if he wants) he would always retain his culture.

⁃ Women have to marry whoever her parents choose.

⁃ As current world offers better amenities, access to things that are necessities and makes life easier, they shop outside the village as well.

⁃ There is polygami and they don’t marry within their village.

⁃ Women build the houses with mud and dung while men protect them from wild animals while women are doing so.

⁃ They Domesticate cows, goats, hens, sheep.

⁃ Their homes are individually for each couple.

We got a tour of traditional home which is made with a mix of mud and dung. Irrespective of the size of the family, the parents get an individual room for themselves.

After exhausting all our curiosity, they showed us how to build a fire organically which was impressive. However, to make lives easier they use matchsticks, tanks to hold clean water and access to medicine when needed. Guide mentioned that they have midwives who take care of women and they tend to use herbal medicines. At last, we saw their market from where any tourist can buy mementos and the earnings are divided amongst all women and not just the one who sold. This encourages a communal spirit in the village.

Just outside the village but connected to it, there was a circle of shops for Masai related souvenirs. Here's a look.

When back to the hotel, we freshened up and enjoyed a sumptuous dinner and ended the day for an early morning the next day.

Mara day 3

This day was more special than previous days as we were going for a balloon ride 🎈

We started early and reached reception at 5:30 am to have some coffee and get ready for balloon ride. We were driven to the balloons at 6 am and had enchanting view of the balloons being blown up and getting ready for the ride.

When we took off in the balloon, the view was breathtaking and instead of capturing it in a camera, I just wanted to stare at it as it was mesmerizing.

Here's a look at the savannah. Isn't it wonderful! Missing it !

View of the balloon from inside the basket

We even ended up spotting some hippos from the balloon

Some of the folks on the ride started talking to the pilot about spotting animals and if we can do that from this height. One thing led to another and we talked about whether one can escape a lion. Our pilot joked that you don’t have to be faster than a lion, just be faster than your friend 😂😂 an hour later we were at ground. And just like that, the beautiful view from the sky ended. Nevertheless, we had fun.

Another fun part of the balloon ride was breakfast in the Savannah. We had to drive half an hour from the landing site to reach the place where breakfast was setup. And as luck would have it, we ended up spotting elands, a huge crocodile, elephants and boars with tiny babies, on the way. Such a pleasant surprise for a short drive.

Once we reached, it was fantastic to see the kind of arrangements done by the hotel. They had full breakfast as in the hotel, along with tables, chairs, cutlery and even napkins (thankfully toilets as well).

After breakfast we were picked by our guide Martin and we headed to find more animals. Very quickly we saw a huge pride of lions with zebras nearby. While this piqued lions interest (and ours to potentially see a kill) zebra ran quickly and lions were too hot to run after it and settled for shade of the bushes instead.

see how lion doesn't care about the cars and walks on

Lions enjoying the shade in the hot afternoon

After this, we returned to our room with plan for a second game drive at 3:30 pm.

But before we do, I had to capture the beautiful bridge that led to our hotel Mara figtree, that was built over talek river. And also, the walk to our rooms that was through lovely bougainvillea in myriad of colors. It was beauty all around.

We started the drive at 4 pm and within 30 min, learnt of 3 cheetahs in the same place. We raced there and discovered that they were mating and there were two male and one female. Learnt that if not for possibility of mating, the cheetah would have moved out and about. At some point, Male tried to leave but the woman growled and they went back into the ditch 😂

We took some pictures of three of them when they came out of the ditch for a short period . For most of the time, they hid in the ditch and were very difficult to see. And then, It was a game of waiting. We decided to spend rest of our game drive that day to wait for the cheetahs to come out, and ended up waiting for almost two hours. There were few instances where the three of them came out of the ditch momentarily and then went back into it and hence out of sight. Nevertheless we enjoyed watching cheetah up close and personal, and ended up getting some very good shots.

As it was getting late and tour guides are not allowed to stay beyond sunset, and we were content with cheetah spotting, we raced back to our resort.

Our tasty and 'many options' dinner. Yumm

Before we left the rooms, we had to use the chairs in the foyer :)

and one picture with the wooden uncle at reception who we always mistook for a real person when walking to and fro the mess

One for the road :)

Mara to Diani

On next day we left Mara to arrive at Diani where we had planned to enjoy a beach experience. It is a well know spot amongst tourists for this very reason. We had a good breakfast at figtree and proceeded to do a short game drive on our way to the airport.

There was a change of rules where guests shouldn’t do game drive on the day they left. But we got a short game drive, thanks to our guide.

All this time when we spotted any buffalo we didn’t give any importance as we were used to seeing them in India. However on learning that buffalo is one of the big 5 (lion, elephant, leopard, rhino & Buffalo ) that tourists come to see, we requested Martin to show us one. Thankfully we spotted one within 15 min of leaving the hotel. We took a picture but from very far and weren’t very satisfied.

As we continued, we learnt of leopard a little ahead. However, we saw a ranger car that could have found out that we weren’t supposed to be in the park on the day of leaving. So Martin met with the ranger proactively and informed them that we were in Savannah despite no game drive on the day of leaving. We paid some money (for tea is what he said) and got a chance to continue the drive and spotted a leopard!! The leopard stayed hidden perhaps due to sun and we got to see only a part of leopard. But it was magnificent to see it up close.

As we continued, we learnt of a lion eating a hippo a little ahead. We sped there but saw another ranger who was stricter and would impose hefty fine. Martin took a U turn very quickly and we departed for airstrip. On the way, we saw family of hippos and two jackals. Finally we saw another buffalo which was very close and got great pics. Also noticed that their horn was very different than the buffaloes we are used to seeing in India. So it was a trip worth having. With this we officially saw the big 5 🥳