The Forces of Nature. 2: The Long Haul.

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The Joys of Travel.

There we were on another long haul journey into Northern Tanzania, into the heart of East Africa where, due to an anxiety-ridden start, all my well-laid plans appeared to fall at the first hurdle...

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Waking at two in the morning does nothing for my mental acuity which, admittedly, struggles to get by at the best of times.

Arriving at the airport car park an hour or so after dragging myself semi-consciously out of bed, only to find the code that I had attempted to use for entry was one from a previous visit and, therefore, we were refused entry. Good start. It was some time later before I realised that the 3rd of October is not identical to the 18th of September. Brain fog that even a double espresso had not cleared. 

After finally parking the car (and immediately forgetting exactly where it was parked) we arrived, somewhat bedraggled at the airport itself. Then, having been through the, as usual, stressful experience of having all your carefully packed luggage discombobulated, it was time to upload more caffeine into my dormant cerebral cortex. This was the right moment to ingest my usual bunch of medical magic, carefully put into a small yellow box entitled ‘emergency medication’ placed carefully into my man-bag. (Man-bags are identical to women’s hand-bags but are so named to avoid any non-macho feedback.) Anyway, this cleverly placed yellow box had somehow transmogrified into a brown box. An EMPTY brown box.

Some time had passed before the increased dose of coffee worked its magic and I discovered the appropriate vessel had mysteriously migrated to hide under the foreign imposter.

And so, finally, to the flight itself. After heading in entirely the wrong direction for two hours, we made the usual about-turn in Amsterdam to then spent eight and a half hours of somewhere between comfortable and uncomfortable flight, to eventually land in Kilimanjaro International Airport near Arusha. 

When I say ‘near Arusha’ I should add that the trip from the airport to Ian’s home the other side of Arusha was its usual death-defying roller coaster ride.  At almost every junction there were police. At almost every junction there were traffic infractions that would cause me to cringe in fear. At absolutely every junction the police gazed on in complete indifference.

This drive necessitated a good twenty-four hour recovery period before setting off for the Serengeti. Time to relax, eat, sleep, avoid panic, reduce blood pressure etc.

Ian's Family

And thus, a mere 24 hours later, we set off on our long drive to the Northern Serengeti.

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In true 'Wildlife Photography' style, I'll start this blog about animals without many animal pictures at all. Instead, a tale of our journey over to the darkest deepest depths of Africa.

There is a Crack in the Earth.

The route from Arusha to the Mara

There is a large crack in the skin of our planet. Try not to panic. It has been there for quite some time.  About 25 million years to be more precise. The locals call it the Valley of the Crack (Bunde ya Ufa). We call it the Rift Valley. We were to travel along its western edge.

Going west from Arusha started promisingly on a tarmac road, albeit littered with the carcasses of overturned lorries. (Due to over-long hours of driving without sleep. Modern civilisation huh?)

Ok, This one was the right way up.

Most traffic was slightly smaller…

It should be noted that most of these photos were taken from a rapidly moving truck, moving up and down at a similar rate to its forward motion. This was to avoid any risk of upsetting local customs. Many here did not appreciate having their souls removed by a magic box. At least, not without greasing palms.

So most photos were taken with the lens poking surreptitiously sideways out of a partially open window at speeds of 1/4000 second. Not ideal for award-winning photography.

We turned off this relatively fast, relatively comfortable, relatively tarmaced road, at Mukuyuni, onto a more typical dirt road.

The local bus service.

The word ‘road’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. The word ‘dirt’ ignores the coinciding, much elongated, dry season, which turns all dirt to the ubiquitous dust.

This whole enormous area is inhabited by the Maasai people.

Travelling through Maasai territory you will notice uncountable millions of cattle, goats, sheep and donkeys. And with them, children. Everywhere; children on the way to school, children coming home from school (schooling is in shifts)...

...and children herding the livestock.

Left unsupervised guarding the livestock may sound risky to you, but to the local predator population, it’s a gift. Two young children were eaten by lions in the Ngorongoro Crater earlier this year.

You will also see some women. Women with large objects balanced precariously on their heads, 

women with donkeys carrying water, women with large knives. Very large knives.

And the men? Erm, no. Not many visible to passing tourists. Their culture is simple. The women gather and shop for the daily necessities of life. The women prepare the meals for the family. The women wash the clothes and dress their children smartly. The women build their huts (thus the knives for cutting the wooden supports) after, of course, gathering all necessary materials.

The men sit on their own under trees and think about the universe. Or something.

There is no system of waste collection around here. Generally speaking there is very little waste, and what little there is can be sold, not thrown away. There is one glaring exception to this: Plastic. Plastic carrier bags themselves are banned in Tanzania for this very reason. However, safe drinking water is often only available in plastic bottles. Some cultures have adapted to this, but the Maasai take the biscuit. They simply throw them on the ground wherever they happen to be at the time. You will see whole fields of squashed plastic bottles, often. with livestock grazing amongst them.

A mess.

We can learn a great deal from such cultures. 😵‍💫

As we headed north alongside the cliff edge that is the western edge of the Rift Valley, the landscape gradually changed. First, as the population declined, the majestic baobabs appeared on the skyline...

...the dust still all-pervading... 

...then slowly gave way to the Serengeti plains. Now too high for Baobabs to survive.

The edge of the crack in the earth appeared before us.

with vaste cliff faces and active volcanoes.

Ok, maybe not active today. It was resting.

Ian used his masterly tracking skills to spot a volcano...

We arrived for lunch at Lake Natron. More of that later.

We entered the huge National Park that is the magnificent Serengeti. As day was fading, we caught our first glimpse of the beast that would consume our next week. Consume or be consumed. 

We approached our abode for the next week, fashionably late, to immerse ourselves into a fortnight in the Serengeti. 

Enfolding ourselves into the forces of nature...

Coming next: It's the end of the world as we know it.