Loliondo January 2004

As we drove out to camp the southern plains from Goll to Nabi were scattered migration. It was not as green as it could be, which may be good for Loliondo, as it is finally getting late rain.

It has rained and the grass was sprouting, by the time we left it was a golf course. The Tommy were starting to calve and every other female, of all types, could hardly run for belly. On the first morning John and I only had one taker for a walk as the rest of the group had remembered that they were on holiday and due back soon.

After the usual, where shall we go this morning, and based on conversations with Maasai visiting camp, we set off for the north of Grumechin hill were the herds of domestic stock were leaving due to tsetse. As we arrived near enough the hill to start walking we paused to look at a small herd of wildebeest and Tommy tightly grouped and nervous. Soon we herd a growl, not far off, and defiantly menacing. So we started to walk towards the hill across open grass and whistling thorn thickets. How they ever got from the first growl to where they appeared is beyond me, but three lions slunk out of a thicket at the foot of the hill at about two fifty yards. A young mature but still clumsy and mane-less lion, a young lioness and an older, wiser lioness. They started up the hill we were to climb but we never saw them make it more than half way up before the vanished into the patches of bush. The wooded plains on either side of the hill were green and the morning air was clear and crisp.

On the windy eastern face of the hill little could be heard for wind but as soon as we zigzagged back and forth to the sheltered west birds were noisy as any sunny cool morning of the first seasonal rain. Near the beginning of the top ridge we stumbled upon three Chandlers reedbuck at ten yards who were reluctant to flee. They took off before I could slip my camera out but as we followed them over the ridge they pointed to the lions that were working there way along the slope below at less than forty yards. There is a certain thrill to watching three large lions swaggering along so close with only grass and slope between you. Especially if you are aware of what they can do. I wanted to hide and so watch them undetected for as long as possible but looking at John realized he was too fearless of a state of mind to comprehend any move that could be seen as un-defiant. So we stood until the older lioness looked up at us and immediately skulked off with the lion, the way she had come. The young and feisty growler, who I am sure I recognize from another day, found her centre dropped her head in unrepentant submission and growled with here ears back before following the others.

Yards away we walked up on a Klipspringer pair. The male was gloriously posed on a bolder with the plains laid out below him. He stood for us viewing us as little threat compared to what he had seen picking their way bellow him a moment before.

After being growled at through the scrubby thorn on the crest of the hill once more, we decided we wanted to win the king of the mountain game and followed cautiously to ensure they trotted down the west slope and out onto the plains, disturbing small groups of eland and zebra. A group of seven giraffe to broke of there browsing to follow with their necks pointing together allowing no confusion in translation and casting long parallel shadows on new grass that shimmers with green energy as it grows.

Two next mornings but one, there were only the three of us for the six am departure and we drove all the way down the Alamana to the Mollel Rocks hoping to see a leopard. At the giant granite boulders near the Serengeti boundary we strolled up onto a young lion with a Mohegan mane. As he was about to be winded with our smell we stopped to watched as it came over him. He lifted his head as soon as the breeze took the odour to him and then as it grew stronger he lazily searched us out. As soon as we appeared in his sleepy field of view and he made us out he was away.

We circled the boulders at a distance hoping, perhaps, to see him again but at a guarded distance. All this time the Guinea fowl chirped angrily on the far side of the outcrop, and we glanced across frequently and furtively. When we eventually rounded into the precarious area of avian alarm we found an 11ft python strung out and obliviously slithering across the floodplain. It was about as thick a slender mans thigh in the middle. It eventually became concerned with us after we had got within a few feet and coiled menacingly. It launched a strike that carried four feet when I got too close. The pattern on its skin was bright, new and stunning, and no, I didn’t immediately think of boots and handbags.