Perfect timing for the Mara migration: PHOTOS

It’s finally here. The time we all wait for. Thousands of wildebeest are streaming into the Mara; a massive mass of comical gnus grunting and snorting, chomping down the grass and creating a feast for the carnivores. It’s the annual migration.

A beautiful tawny lioness in her prime has brought down one from the crowd and slices through the thick hide exposing the gnu’s inner parts. The rest of her pride is nowhere to be seen.

She takes a few bites and then strolls off. There are enough wildebeest to go around so the feline doesn’t have to gorge herself with the meat or call out to the rest of the pride to join her.

The wildebeest and their mates, the zebra, have reached a lugga with pools of water in it. It’s an easier crossing than the great Mara River or Sand River where the crocodiles crowd around the steep slopes of the rivers waiting to make a meal out of them.

The herds run down into the water and up again. It’s a fantastic melody of patterns – stripes of the zebras and the grey of the wildebeest – on sun-drenched grasses tinged red.

Meanwhile the big vultures circle above waiting to rip through the carcasses, performing the essential service of keeping the plains healthy.

If it wasn’t for the vultures and the hyenas, there would be stinking carcasses and diseases all around; we have to thank them for keeping the wild so pristine.

Surreal setting

A bateleur eagle sits on its nest scanning the busy plains, its red beak very visible. The lappet-faced vultures soar and settle on another and below we find a quiet spot to open the tiffin for a hearty meal.

It’s a curry lunch – chicken, rice and vegetables packed by Moses Karanja of Tipilikwani. Our chef believes in complimenting the full spectrum of the senses, hence a spicy meal in a surreal setting.

A few snorts by a river gorge has a pod of hippos, including a pair of males with massive jaws, locked in combat to establish who is the lord of the territory. It’s intense.

Vehicles mill around in the eventide – a sure indication of cats being sighted. We move away and suddenly three massive figures loom – a family of three black rhino. Of Kenya’s approximate 500 we’re watching a trio.

A pride of 17 lions walks past nonchalantly to settle on a disused termite mound as the night approaches fast.

Dr. Elena V. Chelysheva of the Mara-Meru Cheetah Project, tells us that their research shows intense stress on cheetahs as vehicles edge on to them – those cute pictures of cheetahs on car-tops is not the picture we want to see in the future.

The setting sun paints the horizon in the colours of the Mara – the red of the local Maasai, the red of the cats’ kills, the red of the tall grass.

Out in Talek town by the gate and the river, the people of the great plains drive their cattle into the park for a night of grazing as the drought bites.

Blinking lights fool the lions away from the cattle bomas. The lions think those are people moving around with flash lights; it is an ingenious device first thought of by the then nine-year-old Maasai boy, Richard Turere.

“I’ll show you the Tipilikwani tree,” says the young Maasai working at the luxury tented camp on the banks of the river that gives life to the park and its denizens.

Walking along the paths through the natural flora is like bumping into the pioneering wazees of modern Kenya – Mzee Jomo Kenyatta Kenya’s first president, and Allidina Visram a pioneering trader after whom the school in Mombasa is named.

There is a tree in honour of Wangari Maathai who in 2004 became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

The tree in question is the Euclea divinorum, an evergreen tree growing along river banks and held in high esteem by the Maasai. “We use it to treat stomach problems and even malaria,” say my Maasai guides.

I’m enjoying every moment of being at the camp – the tents are custom-made, large with private decks and the interiors filled with colours of the savanna – earth and white. The spit-fire glows at night, the hyena whoops and the lion roars amidst the clang of the bells of the Maasai cattle grazing.