Saturday September 5, 2009
Extraordinary encounters
By TOM COCKREM
For man, it is a mix of thrill and fear. To the animals in Samburu Game Reserve, it’s another day of tourists passing through.
We simply had to stop. Who could resist an encounter — totally unexpected — with such a handsome herd as this?
Our vehicle was just another obstacle they had to get around. And they did this in their own good time, oblivious to us occupants inside. At least 20 adults, with the youngsters at their sides, they could, if they wished, made scrap metal of our car. Happily for us, these elephants of Samburu were among the most congenial you could ever hope to meet.
The fact that game rarely feel threatened by a vehicle is a boon to all safari-ites. Here, in the Samburu Game Reserve, a five-hour drive north from Nairobi, you have ample chance to relish the privilege this affords. Tracks in the park take you to almost every place where game are likely to abide.
Coaxing vervet monkeys to eat out of their hands. The park is a relatively small one. It is not, like the Masai Mara, “absolutely teeming with game”. And it is not, like the Masai Mara, absolutely teeming with tourists, either, whose cavalcades of vehicles are apt to surround a hapless lion, scaring off its next prospective meal.
In Samburu, you’ll find most of the animals you’d want to see in Kenya. With a canny guide and patience, you’ll encounter them all (save for the decimated rhino), and often in extraordinary ways. The best part is — you’ll likely have them completely to yourself.
I can’t remember encountering another tourist vehicle on our trip.
Our safari was a camping one. This meant searching on arrival for a place to pitch our tents. In Samburu, the problem solved itself. The park is neatly dissected by the Ewaso Ngiro river. With giant doum palms and acacia eliantor amply shading its flat sandy banks, you could hardly hope to find a choicer spot for a camp.
The trees play their part in providing your entertainment, too. As well as harbouring a hundred different species of native birds, they are home to vervet monkeys and baboons. Our resident monkeys, ever on the look-out for a snack, were soon coaxed by the children to eat out of their hands. Not to be outdone, the baboons squatted brazenly on rocks, gobbling bananas and posing handsomely — well, not so handsomely — for close-up photographs.
Superb starlings made their iridescent presence felt as well. Wriggling on my stomach to get as close as I could, I soon had the male bird prancing to within inches of my hand. The female was pecking at my leg.
Birds in general are tame at Samburu. When two crowned cranes propped decorously on a branch of a “wait-a-bit” thorn, we were able to drive to within a car’s length of the tree and still not have the birds fly away.
Our guide, Andres, a fearless kind of chap, told me how in the middle of the night he almost made a dash from his tent to the car. Scenes from the book, The Maneaters of Tsavo, had come flooding back to him. I didn’t hear the roar that made his tent flaps shake. It was the snorts of nervous waterbuck that jolted me awake.
Congenial elephants The lion was patrolling the west side of our camp — a stone’s throw from our gallant guide’s isolated tent.
The lions we encountered on our game-drive were adolescent males. Most likely they’d recently abandoned their pride. Lolling placidly beneath a wide acacia tree, they had you feeling you could step out from the vehicle and pat them on the head. Deciding not to do so, I’m still in happy possession of my arm.
As you might expect, game is most abundant near the river. Here is where, at any time of day, onyx, elephant, zebra and gazelles come for refreshment from the stream. There are crocodiles, too, that drape themselves prehistorically across the sandy bars.
We also got an all-too-fleeting glimpse of a leopard’s dappled frame, before it melted magically away in the dappled undergrowth. Spindly little dikdiks, the smallest of the antelopes, danced by our vehicle in obvious relief.
It’s always a delight to see that special brand of zebra with the skinniest of stripes — the grevy. You can’t help but wonder how such a fabulous design — a big resplendent graphic one like this — could have naturally evolved. The grevys of Samburu seem to outnumber their fatter-striped compatriots more than two to one.
The Samburu Game Reserve is far from any town. Around its perimeter live the cattle herding people from whom the park got its named, the Samburu. Though they’re not supposed to go inside the park, you are bound to come across them watering their cattle in the river. My guess is that a blind eye is sensibly turned to this harmless intrusion into what, after all, was originally their land.
Even the children are splendidly decked out with bright red robes and beaded jewellery. They are affable too, especially if you offer them a ball-point pen.
An iridescent starling On our final morning at the camp, I wandered off in search of an elevated spot from which to photograph the sunrise. This was a mistake. Following the track away from camp, I all but bumped headfirst into a troop of buffalos — cape buffalo, that is — that were grazing in the bush.
They looked wholly unamused. Terrified, I beat a swift, heart-thumping retreat back to the camp. I must have made a comic sight as, completely unpursued, I flew into the jeep and slammed the door.
Andres enjoyed the moment a tad more than he charitably should have.
“What would you have done with a lion at your tent?” he laughingly enquired.
Getting there
VISA Required for Kenya. Costs around US$40 (RM141).
Malaysia Airlines flies from Kuala Lumpur to Johannesburg on Friday, Sunday and Wednesday. South African Airways flies from Johannesburg to Nairobi daily.
BRING Sleeping bag, ground sheet, torch, light cottons, jeans and jacket for chilly nights, hat, repellent, sun block & water bottle.
WHEN TO VISIT All year round, except the rainy season around May.
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