PhilHydePhotos: The Endless Plains

The Serengeti, a Maasai word meaning 'the Endless Plains'.

Prepare yourself for the most unbelievable safari ever, with endlessly amazing wildlife and danger on every side. From heart-wrenching experiences to moments of rapture. See nature as never before!

Or

Just read this blog.

Introduction

I am now quite an old hand at safaris (other parts of me are rapidly following suit), but even I have been taken aback by the adventures that are soon to flow onto these pages.

This was to be a safari of two halves. In the first part of this crazy fortnight, we spend a week in the Eastern Serengeti, where the scenery is flat and fairly featureless (thus 'the endless plains'). There is, to counter that, endless hungry beasts.

An awful lot of hungry beasts.

In the second part we visit the Northern Serengeti, with a much more varied terrain and, above all, the notorious river Mara (aka the Bloody Mara). We timed our visit to be there to give us the greatest chance of seeing the two million plus wildebeest and zebra plunge headlong into the crocodile-infested waters of the Mara. Things did not turn out exactly as we had planned. ‘Things’ are like that.

As usual, contact with the outer world became difficult, with my phone declaring bankruptcy within an hour of landing. Annick found a way around this, delaying bankruptcy for a further few days.

In this short two week period we bore witness to an enormous range of animal activity. Animal activity sometimes impacted by the effects of human activity, with even the timing of the seasons being altered by man's hand.

I was not prepared for the shear volume of sightings. This was like no other safari I have done and I was totally ill-equipped for the number of photos I took. This lack of foresight led to a serious lack of photo storage space, overfilling my laptop, crashing my backup drive, and leaving me in floods of tears. All I have to do now is piece them all together and then edit them.

All twenty four thousand of the bloody things...

........

Chapter One: Arrival

Our trip to the Serengeti started as usual by landing at Kilimanjaro airport via Amsterdam from Toulouse. The flights had been uneventful, lacking any hijacking, exploding engines, plummeting to earth screaming or unpleasant intestinal complications.

Ian, our friend and long-term guide, picked us up as usual and, as usual, we miraculously survived the journey to his home in Arusha (traffic regulation here is not only poorly enforced, it is widely ignored) where I was proven not to be a mastermind...

Here we stayed for two nights, recovering from jet lag. There is, after all, an enormous one-hour time difference between Tanzania and France.

To get to the Serengeti National Park we travelled by safari truck from Arusha via Lake Manyara and the Ngorongoro national parks.

Littering the roadside for many miles are upbeat fashionable boutiques such as these:

And here, at lake Manyara, once more we see the detrimental effects of us humans.

This time due to the local tribal people whose effluent and other waste is clogging up the lake, causing it to flood everywhere with polluted muck. No longer a place to visit. Well done us.

The result of not caring for your environment.

We then took a one minute break at the rim of the Ngorongoro crater to photograph its magnificence.

It is impossible to take in its vastness, so this photo will have to do, inadequate as it is.

Between the crater and Serengeti is a large park inhabited by Maasai relocated from the crater itself. This has not worked out well.

The area they were shoved into is now needed as a wildlife reserve, so attempts at being further relocated are ongoing.

These Maasai are all clothed in traditional wear, carry traditional spears, speak traditional Maa and Swahili, communicate with traditional portable phones. 😳

This tool of mass public suppression is everywhere.

Since being relocated, the Maasai population here has grown from 10,000 to 100,000. Most are still living here...

Despite travelling at speed along a track with more potholes than your average UK road, and having to avoid the slings and arrows of misfortune, we did spot the occasional signs of wildlife.