10 Te Travel Guide
Promotional Content • Saturday 25 September 2021
Step onto the savannah
An intrepid on-foot safari across the Kenyan savannah bordering the Maasai Mara National Reserve reveals, at rivetingly close range, the rich drama of this unique African ecosystem. Exploring terrain inaccessible to vehicles, walk between remote lodges and luxurious fly camps through lesser-visited conservancies, where guides share their intimate knowledge of its creatures, great and small. Words: Ben Lerwill. Photographs: Greg Funnell
A walking safari in Naboisho Conservancy, north of Maasai Mara National Reserve
Teir prey scatters, directionless and doomed. Bodies flail, jaws close, limbs tear. A massed battalion of Matabele ants has launched a dawn attack on a termite mound, and the result is mayhem — although the bull giraffe wandering nearby, lithe and lonely on the grasslands, doesn’t so much as blink a long-lashed eyelid. A vulture glides overhead in the blue, no less indifferent. But when you’re with the right
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guide, dramas swirl from the land. Facts, too. Matabele ants, we learn, take their name from a historical race of warriors known for their violent raids. Conversely, these pitiless insects are also the only invertebrates known to care for their injured. A termite mound, meanwhile, is as calibrated and complex as a metropolis, a nest inhabited by millions. “It’s made of soil so rich in iron that pregnant women traditionally consume chunks of it daily,” whispers the wide- hatted, khaki-clad Roelof Schutte, the guide in question. I look again at the skirmish taking place, a micro-battle for the ages in the morning light. When you’re on foot, the reasons to stop and stare come in droves. I’m part of a small group
hiking through the Maasai Mara Conservancies, the vast protected areas that border the northern and eastern edges of the famous Maasai Mara National Reserve itself. Te
arly morning on the plains of Kenya, and we’ve wandered into a massacre. Predators swarm forwards.
history of these conservancies — more of which later — stretches back only a decade. Here, visitor levels are more regulated than in the national reserve, but the high density of wildlife is no less thrilling. And, unlike in the reserve, walking safaris are permitted. Should you be imagining a quick pre-sundowner stroll to admire the birdlife, think again. We’re covering more than nine miles a day.
In the wild A walking safari is an extraordinary thing. Step onto the savannah, and in no time your perception of the world around you starts to shift: noises amplify, smells heighten, distances morph. When there’s literally nothing separating you from the landscape, you can’t help but witness it more clearly than if you were in a vehicle. On foot, the small and the subtle become as all-absorbing as the large and the hairy. Although, wait — is that guttural,
ground-shaking roar what I think it is? “Stick with me at all times,”
instructs Roelof, a man so familiar with the Mara that Disney sought him out to help with logistics on its 2019 remake of Te Lion King. From his shoulder hangs a .458 Winchester Magnum rifle. “We walk in single file,” he continues. “Click or whistle to get my attention. And never panic.” Te walk ahead of us is three days
long, although longer and shorter versions can both be arranged. One of the aims of our itinerary — designed by East Africa specialist Asilia Africa, whose accommodation is used
A giraffe in the Maasai Mara National Reserve
Ashlina, a lioness, rests
throughout — is to show the contrast between the well-trodden reserve and the lesser-visited conservancies. Which isn’t to say, of course, that
time spent on the former is some sort of booby prize. Just minutes after our tiny plane touches down on the reserve’s Olkiombo Airstrip (think red dirt, crisscrossed by baboons), we’re driven to a watering hole astir with wallowing hippos. Beyond, big-screen Africa ripples out to the horizon, a zebra-dotted infinity of golden hills. A short while later, our four-wheel-
drive comes to a halt by a leafy, low-slung tree. Unseen frogs croak a liquid chorus as long-tailed starlings glimmer across the sky. Te evening is warm and full of earthy smells. On the
Maasai women sing in the village of Olsere, Naboisho Conservancy
bough above us, a female leopard surveys the landscape with regal insouciance, her rosettes picked out in exquisite detail by the glowing sunset.
On the road Te following day, we drive north to reach the conservancies. Despite both the reserve and the conservancies having mapped borders, there are no fences between the two. It means that wildlife roams freely from one to the other, as evidenced by the herds of Tomson’s gazelles that line our route, their flanks striped in liquorice allsorts shades of tan, black and white. We arrive in Naboisho
Conservancy: our base for the night is Naboisho Camp, where we’re greeted with scented cold towels and
a buffet lunch. Our long walk begins tomorrow, but an evening drive hints at what the area has to offer. Jackals creep through the shrubland. Ostriches strut flamboyantly across the plains. And there’s more: with heart-pounding suddenness, a dip in the land reveals a resting pride of five lions. For 20 minutes, we watch the animals stretching and stirring. Ten, as daylight fades to nothing, the male stands, shakes down his mane and stalks into the night. Lock up your impalas.
First published in the September/ October 2020 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK). Read the feature in full online at
nationalgeographic.co.uk
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