Masai Mara 2013

It was tough leaving Aarav and Sandhya at home in Dubai as I took my Kenya flight to Nairobi. The whole trip was in a bit of jeopardy with the arrival terminal in JKIA Nairobi having burnt down in a fire 5 days ago. Checked with Aditya Dicky Singh on latest update and he said things seem to have been resolved.

Took a 2 odd am flight from Dubai and arrived in Jomo Kenyatta early morning on time at around 630 am. Full marks to Kenya Airways and all the ground staff at JKIA to get the airport up and running so soon after the fire. I can imagine the technical and administrative challenges in ensuring a full suite of immigration and other systems linked up to servers in a makeshift tent. Even the smell of the burnt ashes was in the air as we alighted and walked over to the visa on arrival tents.  I got some good sleep for 4 odd hours and was pretty fresh on arrival. Visa and immigration was super-efficient – in fact the most efficient I remember Nairobi to be!

Outside the makeshift terminal, met up with Ken from Sunworld safaris. Chatted up with him and he knew that the KQ from Mumbai in which Dicky and team was arriving was a bit delayed. I waited in one of the open tented areas reading a Wilbur Smith and enjoying the amazing Nairobi morning – a cool 18 degs.

Once the gang from India arrived, we all got into our respective landcruisers after getting local SIM cards. The hardiness of the landys were to be tested to the brim during the week – especially the last day when we were caught sliding across the cotton soil of Mara in a thunder storm.

We took off towards Nairobi CBD and then off to rift valley and Narok. Took the usual break at the top, before descending into the valley and first timers to Mara got the first glimpse of the magic land from afar. Stopped at Narok to have lunch at around 2 and we all inaugurated the first of many Tusker “cheers”. Tusker is my favorite lager and probably one of the best kept secrets of Kenya! More than the Nairobi weather, traffic, rift valley view it is the Tusker at Narok for first lunch enroute to Mara that gets me to the Mara mood! That’s also when it finally sinks that I’m back in Mara for sure – no more worries on missing flights, getting bumped off flights, losing luggage, forgetting lens or camera bodies and all other such fears that I have before every  Africa shooting trip.

Drove right through Mara into our camp. This year we were tenting in Matira Bush Camp, in central Mara, close to both Mara and Talek rivers. It was a nice wooded area where we could listen to Hyenas through the nights and a male Lion that starts roaring at around 430 am – pretty early riser! Waking up to the sounds of hyenas and lions – that is something which I always look forward to in the bushes.

We were there for a week – tents were good, bucket showers were nice, food was ok, cold Tuskers were plenty, charging points worked, no dangerous encounters of any sort – overall a pretty good homecoming into the bush for us city dwellers! We knew that crossings had started pretty early and hence might miss on seeing wildebeest crossings at the Mara. I was quite ok with that since I had all required images of crossings from the summer of 2011. This year my focus was predator action and as usual Mara over delivered! From a photography perspective, as usual for Africa, I just had two bodies and 17-40 and 100-400, apart from a 50 mm prime. Most of the equipment worked without mishaps but for the 40 D which gave err99 two days making my heart skip a beat. Also the Sandisk 16 GBs did miss reading few shots during RAW bursts (even while buffer was not full) while the cheaper Transcend worked like a dream. Thing to keep in mind for future.

We did get some rains during the night and a wonderful thunderstorm the last evening during our drive back. That for me was one of the most beautiful evenings in memory with the land cruiser sliding and bursting through the incessant water curtain including 3-4 360 degree spins throwing us around. We had just seen a Leopard mom and her two cute cubs and the throwing around increased the adrenaline rush even further. The trip overall was one of my best ever and the best to Mara. Could not have asked for more as the write up below and the images with it would testify.

Predators were the focus and hence Ill share some predator stories than a full-fledged trip report.  Starting with Cheetahs, then Lions, then leopards and finally others.