Don and I just returned from a scouting trip to East Africa, flying through Dubai, where we spent two nights. We are putting together a proposed itinerary for an East African safari adventure, using the wonderful experiences we have enjoyed during our visits to Tanzania last year and Kenya and Uganda this year. Having driven for long hours over miserable roads, we know we will fly to many of our destinations so that we have more time to enjoy the animals and the luxury camps. We hope this report will entice you to join us, probably in the fall of 2010, on what is truly the trip of a lifetime. Meanwhile, read on to see what we learned and enjoy our photos and the beautiful animals that populate this fascinating part of the world.

Dubai is a city state, part of the United Arab Emirates, ruled by a sheikh who is one of the Emir's cousins. The various parts of the UAE are pretty independent, but the emir, who lives in Abu Dhabi, can still call the shots if there is some overarching disagreement. The city has seen a massive construction boom and, despite the severe downturn in its finances, is still doing some building, including seven palm-shaped islands in the Persian Gulf (all landfills). The ruling sheikh has decided that Dubai will be the financial center of the Middle East and is well on his way to reaching his goal. While in Dubai, we visited the world's largest shopping center, wandered through the old gold market (souk), and rode their newly opened metro, which is still under construction at many points along its way. Dubai also is about to open the world's tallest building. It's quite an ambitious place, the Middle East headquarters for many global banks and corporations, which have large buildings there.

We talked to quite a few people in Dubai, waitresses, cab drivers, shop owners, other workers. Only about 11% of the residents are "native." Most come from all over the Middle East, the Philippines and Central Asia. Our waitresses in a Japanese restaurant were all Philippinas. They said life in Dubai is "very hard." They work very long hours and don't always get their one day off a week. They live in dormitories, probably much like factory workers in China. They all work in Dubai to save money and to send money home to their families. The rug merchant we spent time with told us he's from Nepal, has a wife and daughter in Nepal, and tries to get home once a year. He said he can't support his family if he lives in Nepal. But, his visa is about to expire, so he plans to move home and worries that he won't be able to find work. He wants to build houses, but found that he can't sell the "nice" home he built last year because it's not what Nepalese are used to.

We flew from Dubai to Nairobi on Emirates Airlines, a great airline that actually provides real service in coach and even offers some room for your legs.

We spent the night in Nairobi before going to a tiny city airport that provides air service to game parks all over Kenya. Our plane was an 18-seater that flew very low so we could see all the farming. Kenya is experiencing a terrible drought in the north, so the ground is virtually bare. But, we flew over the Kenya highlands (which we later drove across), lush with banana, tea, coffee and wheat plantations. Except in the highlands, which were known as the "white highlands" during the British colonial period, farming in both Kenya and Uganda is by hand. The earth is turned over with a wooden spade and the ubiquitous hoe—the essential farm tool—is used to break up the huge clods of earth, dig out the weeds, smooth the soil and prepare it for planting. Then, of course, it is used daily to keep the fields weeded. As one person told us, you cannot farm a very large plot of land if all you have is a hoe. So, throughout most of Kenya, the farms are quite small because they are the size that one family can manage to farm entirely by hand. The same is true in Uganda.

Samburu National Park was our first game park. We landed at a little dirt runway. There were a couple of huts and a few Samburu guides waiting for us, as well as a weathered board that said "Duty Free Shop Here." Our guide, Robert, met us with a large Land Cruiser that had a pop-up top for better game viewing. Samburu is truly desperate. The animals are starving to death. Starvation has already claimed many of them, making great fodder for hyenas and vultures. We drove by one calf that was dead—but then we saw an ear flicker. That was all the poor little thing could muster. He wasn't going to last more than an hour or so. The predators are fat and fit, however, since their weakened prey are easy to run down. The Samburu say, "This is just nature." But, they are very worried about the fate of their animals and themselves. Starvation is always at hand for the people, too. We saw one newly born impala whose mother was all ribs, no flesh. We wondered how she could possibly provide milk for her baby.

The rivers are all dry in NW Kenya. The Samburu warriors (the young men) dig wells in the bottom of the dry river beds for their livestock and the wild animals in the park. Otherwise, there is no water. A group of women walked along the dry river bed in front of our tent camp singing a rain song and dancing a rain dance in hopes of bringing rain. The staff told us that would surely bring them rain.

We took a guided walk one afternoon and saw a tiny gerenuk (an antelope with a long neck and skinny legs, found only in the Samburu area). It couldn't have been more than a couple of days old and had no fear of us. It lay down in the shade of a bush and didn't move when we approached it. We didn't touch it, of course, but could have. It had very long ears and a tiny muzzle—so very adorable. Our guide pointed out useful plants, including a toothbrush bush. If you cut off a piece of the stem and massage it with your fingers, it flares into many strong strands that the Samburu use to brush their teeth.

One of the highlights was seeing a leopard, first lying on the ground, then ambling off to climb a tree. He walked right in front of us before draping himself over a large limb. About 15 minutes later, he walked down the branch, leaped to the ground and wandered off to hunt. Such a beautiful creature.

Samburu is close to the border with Somalia, so has thousands of refugees living in the area. The Somalis are Muslim, while the Kenyans are Christian or animist. Everyone is extremely poor, living mostly in mud or concrete hovels. Clearly, there is no employment opportunity. People have to farm, but the land isn't theirs and the drought has made it impossible to grow crops anyway.

When we left Samburu, we drove across the Kenya Highlands, past Mount Kenya (16,800', with a technical climb to the summit), and on to Lake Nakuru, a six hour drive mostly on awful roads. We only had one night there, so went to see the flamingos and resident white rhinos. In addition to the rhinos, which we'd never seen up close before (we saw eight, including a baby), we watched for about an hour as a pride of eight lionesses hunted a water buffalo. They spent most of their time thinking about it and moving slowly into position and it was fascinating to watch their movements. Some of the younger ones wrestled while they waited, alerting the gazelles that had been the first target of the senior lioness, so they took off. Eventually, as the lions got closer to the buffalo, three other males came up from the lake and chased them off.

On to Masai Mara, another five hour drive over very rough roads. The reserve is divided into three parts, with the Mara River running between them. In the north, where we were, the reserve is privately leased by a group of resorts, all luxury tent camps. But because of the drought, they have opened that part of the reserve to the Masai to graze their herds. Masai Mara has had some rain and is quite green. There is even substantial grass in some parts, so the animals look far better than the ones in Samburu. It is a huge area, the extension of Tanzania's Serengeti Plain into Kenya. On the northern part of the reserve, where the Masai are grazing their cattle, the grass is pretty marginal, but south of the grazing area, where cattle are not allowed, it's quite lush. When we arrived at our camp, which was beautiful, we found zebra, giraffes, eland, gazelles and warthogs drinking from the Mara River, which runs right by the tents. A large group of about fifty hippos occupies a big pool just below the dining room. The Masai Mara isn't controlled as carefully as the Tanzanian parks, where you can only drive on prescribed tracks. Here, the tourist vehicles drive all over the ground, ruining the grass and leaving huge erosion channels when the rains come.

The Mara River is the famous river where the wildebeest cross by the thousands during their migrations in the spring and fall. Some are picked off by the waiting crocodiles who loll on the banks near the crossing points. We were lucky enough to watch a crossing. At one of the main crossing points, we saw eight or ten crocodiles, lying in the sun. There was a partially eaten wildebeest floating nearby, victim of an earlier, unsuccessful, attempt to cross the river, which isn't very wide or even terribly deep, but a real challenge for the wildebeest.

Typically, the wildebeest herds mass on one side of the river before they cross. The group we watched numbered many hundreds. We could see them running from all over the south side of the river to one gathering spot. Then they all moved up river from the crocodiles (not by design, I'm sure, but just by luck) to another crossing point. They stood around for the better part of an hour staring at the river, trying to decide if they should go. Periodically one would break out of the herd and head towards the water, only to turn back. Finally one brave creature plunged into the water and started bounding across. At that point, the entire herd followed madly, leaping off a cliff, crashing into the water and swimming frantically to our side. Then they all just wandered off grazing as if nothing unusual had occurred, their coats all wet and silvery in the sunlight.

Our next great find was a pride of lions, including a large male. They were sleeping under a tree, obviously stuffed from the previous night's successful hunt. We drove off to find a tree for our picnic lunch (they are yellow bark acacias, very tall, with spreading canopies, but they're sparsely scattered over the savannah). As we drove up to the tree we'd picked, we saw two huge male lions asleep underneath and watched them for a while before looking for an alternative lunch spot. Their breathing was surprisingly fast, panting really, even though they were sound asleep and paid no attention to us.

Four cheetahs were asleep under another tree. Later, they moved off towards the gazelles grazing far away on the plain. There was a Disney film crew that had been following them all day, hoping to film them hunting.

Both the tent camps in Samburu and Masai Mara were wonderful. Spacious tents right on the river (dry in Samburu, flowing fast in Masai Mara), small camps, lovely common areas for meals and socializing and good food. In Masai Mara, you have to wait for one of the guards to escort you to and from your tent at night because there are so many animals in the surrounding bush and drinking at the River. The elephants and water buffalo are the most dangerous.

We flew from Masai Mara back to Nairobi and then on to Entebbe, Uganda. There are two airlines that serve the four airstrips in Masai Mara. They hop from one to the other before continuing on to Nairobi. We were stop number three, which is preferable to being stop number one. Entebbe is the old British capital of Uganda, with the Governor's Residence, now occupied by the President. But, the capital is now in Kampala, about 30 miles and an hour's drive north from Entebbe (where Uganda's international airport is located), which is right on Lake Victoria. As we flew into Entebbe, we crossed Lake Victoria for some time, looking down at hundreds of islands, some very far out, and all occupied by farmers and fishermen. It was a thrill for me to finally see this huge lake, the source of the Nile, which has played such a prominent role in African exploration and history. On our way back through Entebbe, we stopped so we could put our fingers in the water.

Kampala is a large city built on a number of hills. Like Nairobi, it has a real mix of great wealth and (mostly) extreme poverty. The roads are lined with tiny shops and houses, most dark, dank and dirty, though the roads are surprisingly clean. There are also large mansions on the higher hillsides, all protected by high walls. Uganda is much more tropical than Kenya, so has had lots of rain and is very lush. Farming here is also by hand, even the tea and banana plantations which predominate on the hillsides. It is very hard work. The soil looks very good, but many of the farms are on steep mountainsides, so obviously extremely difficult to farm. Uganda has a unique breed of cattle with huge horns that curve out from the sides of their heads in big arcs, more vertical than Longhorns.

Our destination was the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, home to 370 of the rare mountain gorillas. You can fly to an airstrip or drive on mostly poor roads. We wanted to see the country, so drove for eleven hours to get to Bwindi; a long day, but very beautiful scenery and very interesting towns and villages. Uganda is about to conduct another census and expects its population to have more than doubled from ten years ago, from 6 to 13 million. There are people everywhere. The roads are crowded, not with carts drawn by donkeys (there are no donkeys—probably due to the tse tse fly), but with pedestrians and many bicycles. The bicycles are used like carts, with their owners usually pushing huge loads of bananas or charcoal or reeds up the long hills to the local markets. According to our guide, the government thinks rapid population growth is fine. But, clearly there aren't jobs for the large numbers of young people. We saw dozens of schools, many private. While primary education is free in government schools, there are fees for secondary and private schools, which most people can't afford (in the range of $200 per year in a country where most people make less than $400 per year). Nonetheless, we saw thousands of kids in their school uniforms walking to and from school. Unfortunately, we also too many kids not in school because their parents don't think it's important (according to our guide, who seemed to think Uganda would be better off with a dictator who required all kids to go to school).

We talked to the manager of our tent camp in Bwindi one night. He is from the Northeastern part of Uganda, near the Sudan border. He told us how hard life is for his family because of the constant fighting for the last two decades. He said all their animals had been stolen many years ago (animals are the measure of wealth for his tribe as well as for the Masai and Samburu), so they had to farm by hand on very small plots. Drought had wiped them out over and over. Soldiers from warring factions in Sudan frequently cross the border to raid in Uganda, killing people and stealing crops (there are no animals left to steal).

In Bwindi, groups searching for the gorillas are limited to eight people per guide, plus armed guard. The Reserve sends trackers out early in the morning to find the gorillas because treks are limited to eight hours for finding and watching the gorillas. That would be a long day, traipsing through the rain forest. Each tourist group is assigned to a particular gorilla family. Our trackers had spotted ours even before we left the headquarters, so it only took us 45 minutes to find the gorillas. You can spend an hour with these beautiful animals. Our family has eighteen members (the guides know each one by name and personality) and we saw eleven of them, including a huge (650 pound) silverback male, the leader of the family. There were a number of babies, the responsibility of all the adults in the family. They were not bothered by us at all and just lolled around eating and grooming, babies and youngsters playing in the trees. They were very quiet.

You are not allowed to get closer than twenty feet, because the gorillas get human diseases so easily, but we ended up being right next to them. One baby even crept up to Don's backside and started plucking at his pants and shirt and grabbed his hand when he reached around to see what was going on. A woman in our group realized she'd lost her binoculars when we got out of the forest. She and the guide went back to find them. They found a young gorilla trying to figure out how to use them, moving them back and forth and looking into the glasses. He had picked them out of her pocket. The woman and our guide waited until the silverback signaled it was time to move on. The young gorilla dropped the binoculars and took off with his family.

The chimps we tracked in Kibale Forest National Park were completely different. They are the closest of the primates to humans. Unlike the gorillas, they kept moving all the time. We traipsed along after them, crawling through the vines and underbrush filling the spaces between the huge trees the chimps love. They are very noisy, with screams, howls, and grunts to signal what they are doing and where they are going. They use the long thin root systems of banyan trees like a drum, beating on them to communicate where they are going. When the head male comes along the trail, all the other chimps scramble up the trees as fast as they can, screeching all the while. If they're too slow, the "daddy" of the family swats them firmly and sends them scampering up the nearest tree. The chimps moved up and down the trees very rapidly. Sometimes, one would crash down, catching himself by grabbing a vine or branch on the way down. It was all very fast and very noisy. We tracked them for an hour. The jungle was absolutely filled with their calls and motion.

Back to top