We left our jeep and stepped into the wild, safety not a strong contender against brunching with hippos. After days of digging fingers into leather seats as we rode around the Maasai Mara, disembarking onto the scorched dirt ground was daring and far from the sanctuary of our Mara Serena hotel rooms.
A guide welcomed us to breakfast with ‘karibu’. A buffet of food and a heated karoga awaited me, which looked surreal next to the waterhole. Hippos were catching a tan, eyes bobbing over surface level, lazily watching us. Guides hung around as we tucked into western eggs and bread accompanied by a side of ugali, a starchy dish like polenta, but coarser.
This champagne breakfast was a cure for the night before. Midnight safaris happen in the Mara exactly as the clocks strike twelve. A combination of sleep deprivation (try driving for hours to the Mara on miles of rocky roads, the alternative was a sputtering 12-passenger plane) and a head cold wouldn’t deter my companions. The night before I was dragged onto a windowless jeep to trek the Maasai Mara. Without windows or doors, against a night lit by the moon, the guides drove with dimmed or no headlights, knowing the routes better than their faces.
My cousin who is Kenyan took this midnight drive as an opportunity to tell me, ‘the hotel we’re staying at, a cheetah took off with a kid. Just snatched the baby and was gone’. He had refrained from telling this story earlier as his kids were staying with us.
I nodded in feigned understanding, while trying to rouse myself from sleep, the humidity was tougher to fight in a blanket of darkness. Then I heard it, a guttural sound, deep and frankly otherworldly. I didn’t watch documentaries at the time, I didn’t know that a lion’s roar wasn’t the kind found in animated shows. This version echoed on through the night.
‘To your right, it’s a male’, was whispered in the packed vehicle. There he was, about twelve feet away from my doorless seat. ‘He knows you’re all watching, don’t be fooled.’ The lion took strong steps towards a watering hole glimmering under the moonlight, another sandy coloured creature responded with its own roar.
‘Can lions swim?’ I whispered. I received a nod, towards the lion, who was lazily looking to both sides before plunging belly deep into the water. He swam. Transfixed, I watched until he reached the other side. Joining his mate with another thunderous but unalarming roar, lighter with no urgency.
We drove on. It was similar to watching a theatre production especially coordinated for us. The Mara animal puppets acting out extraordinary scenes.
The morning’s breakfast was a far cry from danger after the midnight ride, but a ranger pulled-up in his special jeep, spoke amongst the others and approached our peaceful gathering, beaming.
‘It’s your lucky day. The wildebeest are passing any second on the other side. Oh look, can you see them?’ He asked. ‘This is good, it would be an unlucky day if we’d sat you on the other side’, he laughed, confident in his knowledge of tracking the wildlife. I saw them. Through the trees, moving at a reasonable pace for heavy animals. We were witnessing the Great Wildebeest Migration. Herds of stampeding feet in resemblance to the all-time scene where Mufasa gets trampled in The Lion King.
Everyone considered how we wouldn’t have survived our champagne breakfast if Mufasa didn’t survive the stampede. Luckily the park’s rangers were well versed and equipped in the language of wild animals.
The annual migration takes place between July and October from the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania to where we were sat, the Maasai Mara National Park in Kenya. These wildebeest were lagging, the last of the lot.
On return to our hotel rooms we watched a zebra cross our path. The driver stopped and laughed, recited ‘look you have your zebra crossing’ as if he would never get tired of repeating it to every guest. Back at the Mara Serena, the last twenty-four hours were packed with enough action, so instead of lounging poolside I took a break at my lodge window. Accompanied by two grazing giraffes, looking out at what seemed an empty expanse until you were in the thick of it.
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