Kenya boasts a phenomenon that every lover of Africa and its wildlife should get to see, writes Angus Begg
It is a story that has been told, filmed and read on numerous occasions: of the million-plus wildebeest that every year make the trek north from Tanzania’s Serengeti to Kenya’s Masai Mara. More than a million grunting, horned and hairy creatures march in single file on plains pulled taut across the horizon.
Starting any time from late July the wildebeest follow the rains and grazing to the wide and open grasslands of what has become known as “the Mara”. They may be late, but they will always make the trip, driven by dry conditions in the Serengeti and led by the lightning and thunder to the north.
Come November they start the homeward leg, bound again for the Serengeti.
“August 22”, read the message. It came from the Nairobi office of a camp called “Governors”, one of the premier game-viewing destinations in the Masai Mara National Park, and it was referring to a safe date to witness the legendary migration “in action”.
As it happens, it’s not quite so simple, but first we had to get there.
The flight from Johannesburg was a good one, the clear weather revealing the likes of the thick and serpent-like Zambezi river, the impressive length of Lake Malawi (all 320km) and that other African great, Mount Kilimanjaro, en route. I couldn’t remember seeing Africa’s highest peak so clearly, or being so close, and judging by the pilot’s comment and reaction, it was a rare occasion for him too.
He began his descent for Nairobi early, flying parallel to the summit and affording the fortunate passengers on flight SA 183 remarkable views many would doubtless never have seen before.
A 20-minute drive across the city from Jomo Kenyatta International is Kenya’s domestic and regional flight hub, Wilson airport.
Often the base for the aid agency flights that service the many countries so often in need around East and Central Africa, Wilson is also the departure point for many a tourist’s dream trip, whether the beaches of Mombasa and Malindi, the elephants of Amboseli or the arrival of the wildebeest migration in the Masai Mara.
Which, as I mentioned before, can be late. And, as luck would have it, proved to be the case on this occasion.
Nearing the end of our 50-minute, 18-seater flight from Nairobi into the Mara, my colleague and I were constantly craning for that first glimpse of the anticipated huge numbers of wildebeest. Between occasional Masai manyattas (settlements) we would see a snaking stripe of creatures against the winter-brown earth, but nothing National Geographic. There hadn’t been sign of them for days, said the pilot, who perhaps covers the best part of the Mara every day.
No sooner had we stopped at one airfield than we took off for the next, just across the Mara river.
That gives you an idea of the proximity between two of the Masai Mara’s best-known establishments: Kichwa Tembo, owned by Johannesburg-based Conservation Corporation Africa (CCA), and the Governors group of camps. The former set in a thicket just outside the main gate of the Masai Mara National Park although this is largely inconsequential, as there aren’t any fences at the foot of the distinctive Oloololo hills, and the latter comprising four camps set in primary riverine forest along the Mara river.
Governors was apparently so named because the colonial governors of Kenya used to entertain guests and take holidays there with wildlife of all description right outside, sometimes even inside, the camp. A drive out of the wild olive and African greenheart trees that shelter the respective camps reveals herds of impala, elephant, buffalo, de fasso waterbuck (large white smudge on the backside instead of the ring associated with the common waterbuck) and attentive, grooming olive baboons.
On the other side of the camps is the river, with its hippos and understandably large crocodiles (they feast well every year, when the wildebeest and zebra cross the Mara river in the course of the migration). The Governors group is divided into Main Camp (30-plus luxury tents), Little Governors (20 plus), Private (whoever books it gets the whole camp four tents) and the newest, Il Moran (10 contemporary, large and well-appointed tents).
Across the river, at the head of the plains frequented by the cheetah and black rhino, and a 30-minute game-drive from Little Governors, are the 30-plus tents of Kichwa Tembo. A short walk along a forested track is the highly exclusive, 10-tent Bateleur Camp, built in a style similar to the CCA camps of Southern Africa. So luxurious that at times you forget you’re in a tent.
From Il Moran we set out in search of the wildebeest “advance troops”. And we found them.
Not thousands, not yet anyway, but a good many hundred, all moving in the same direction. Constantly grunting (very nasally) and chewing, they were living up to the name given to them by the English the gnu.
An instinctive, massive movement, the migration, which happens to be one of the most filmed events in the wildlife calendar, is also surprisingly ordered. The beasts are driven by instinct, like the flashes of lightning and rolling thunder in the north (and in this instance unseasonal rains in the Serengeti, which delayed their progress). The attraction of the Masai Mara lies in the vast plains characteristic of the East African savanna. The spectacle is the migration of the hairy hordes driven by a common purpose. The drama is provided by the crocodiles preying on the creatures as they ford the Grumeti and Mara rivers on their journey northwards.
The number of other vehicles will depend on the time at which you visit. It is after all the home of the “safari”, the associated wildlife on the plains and the stage of that which every lover of Africa and its wildlife should get to see the migration.
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