Samburu Safari - Total Sensory Experience

Even ignoring the amazing elephants, the safari in Samburi was a veritable buffet of wildlife sights and sounds.

The safari adventure started at Nairobi's Wilson Airport, a small domestic airport where we were not required to show photo ID, but we did have to show proof we had paid in advance for our lodging at the safari camp. There was a metal detector, but the security guard didn't stop me from entering when I set it off. Once we climbed into the prop plane with about 6 other people, the pilot turned around and called out a request that we refrain from smoking and we remove any "sick bags" from the plane if we use them during flight. After that, we flew over the awe-inspiringly impoverished Kibera slum, passed some beautiful green hills and Mt. Kenya with enough time to get a few decent shots, and stopped briefly at an airstrip on the equator before landing in Samburu.

The airstrips at Samburu and Laikipia were just stretches of gravel with safari guides waiting in trucks alongside, and of course, all-natural "restrooms." The primitive facilities did lead Melissa, who has also worked in China, and me to marvel at the fact that a hole in the ground inside a wood shack was remarkably breathable, whereas even marble restrooms that look clean in China suffer from a persistent smell of - well, you know. Why is that? It's particularly puzzling because many such restrooms in China have a constant attendant with a mop and rag, but no matter how much they wipe, the odor remains.

The African savannah was just as you've seen it in National Geographic and Animal Planet specials, with a clear azure, almost turquoise sky providing the background for reddish-tan dirt plains, greenish brown grasses & shrubs, and flat-topped acacia trees reaching their perfectly delicate, spiny branches. Tall grass had flourished after recent rains, making us worry we'd have a hard time seeing animals, but in the end no one was able to hide from us and Charles the tenacious guide, not even the notoriously anti-social leopard.

The very first animal I saw on safari was a dikdik (above), an itty-bitty antelope or "dear-like creature (DCL)" as Melissa calls them. I won't bore you with pictures and descriptions of every DLC I saw, but this one was special because he launched my successful game-hunting experiences, so here he is. We also saw his mate, not far away because dikdiks mate for life and travel in pairs.

Surrounded by wildlife in its natural environment, you just can't help but marvel at the fact that everything in nature has a purpose. Giraffes, for instance, have antiseptic spit. Huh? Well, they eat almost exclusively those thorny acacia trees, constantly puncturing their tongues. The antibiotic properties of their saliva heal those wounds almost immediately.

And yet, with a reason for everything, there are some things that always defy explanation. One inexplicable fact is humans' willingness to kill animals like elephants, giraffes, oryx, and all the others solely for the ornamental value of their skin and appendages. On a happier note, our guide told us the improbable story of a female lion in Samburu National Reserve who adopted her prey instead of eating it. This lioness, now featured on the entrance sign that reads, "Where nature defies itself!" is apparently barren, as she has never borne her own cub. Unlike most lionesses, who stick with a pride, she seems to have always been a loner. She adopted a young oryx one year and raised it until another lion killed it when she went to drink water. She was despondent and later exhibited the same behavior toward another oryx, but game keepers this time decided to separate the pair. She continues to wander alone.
After seeing elephants, lions, giraffes, oryx, a secretary bird, guinea fowl, and countless DLCs the first and second day, the only thing left to pursue late in the afternoon our second day was the elusive leopard. Charles doubted we would find one - he pointed out that leopards surely had been watching us as we drove around the park, but they were very difficult to find; he hadn't spotted one in three weeks. As he drove us up into an area he called "leopard country," Charles said if a leopard were anywhere it would be basking on top of a rock.

We were creeping - and bumping - up a very rocky road, and Tim, Melissa, and I were dutifully scanning the boulders above, when Charles breathed, "There is the leopard." Sure enough, a leopard walked around the front tire of the truck, along the side, and leapt up top of the rock to our right, barely 10 yards away. He walked in a circle and settled down to rest and lick his fur, just like my Chinese stray, General Tsao.

We were all in awe, even Charles, and just about the only thing that would have made us more so was the appearance of another leopard - which is exactly what happened. Leopards are solo wanderers who only get together for about three days per year to mate, and we fortuitously caught this pair at exactly that time.

The leopard only rested a moment before jumping down to follow his prospective mate. We followed the white tips of their tails for a while as they disappeared into the brush up the hill. I was almost as struck by the intense interest and fascination on the part of Charles and the other guides as by the sighting itself. They ride back and forth throughout the park every day, and anything that can get them this excited is truly special.

I lack the eloquence, the energy, and the bandwidth to represent even a fraction of what we saw and heard on safari in Samburu. To see more images, follow the photo link below:

Samburu

For an even better sense of the absolutely foreign, divine sensation of waking up along the banks of the muddy Uaso Nyiro River in central Kenya, click play below to listen to the sounds that roused us before our 6:30 a.m. game ride. After listening to this, it was painful to wake to the jarring sound of Chinese talk radio on my alarm clock back in Beijing...