Leopards are the most popular among the great cats in Africa and I would say they are the most sought-after mammal on safari. They are difficult to find, very beautiful and they transmit a sense of veiled power. Interestingly, every time we have seen a leopard, resting, walking or on the prowl, you hear alarm calls from a variety of animals. We have not heard this when lions, cheetah or hyenas are around.
So, when you find one that is approachable and you have time, first and foremost you watch it and then, regardless of how the light is, you photograph it but without forgetting that watching it is the important part of the event!
We spotted this beast during our journey through the Mphongolo Loop (S56). In fact, it was found by my wife Mabel and I am still trying to understand how she did it. As they say in this part of the world, she has a “trained eye” and never ceases to surprise me.
This is what she saw and I promise that it was still much further away from us than what the picture shows! She assures me that she is able to see a tail movement or the flicking of an ear! It took me a while to find it!
The picture below may be of help before I reveal it…
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If you still have not managed, that is the spotted beast spotted!
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The young leopard was enjoying its life and we managed to watch it on our own for about an hour before another car joined us. An almost impossible feat in the Kruger National Park.
I think that of all our leopard sightings, I can claim credit for one. It was a male leopard that was lying sunning itself a couple of metres from the car and on my side of the road.
The above sighting was so nice that my next post will be a slide show of the pictures we took. I hope you will enjoy them.
Our favourite drive while in the northern Kruger National Park is the Mphongolo Loop (S56) that goes between Shingwedzi Rest Camp and Babalala Picnic Site It is about 30 km and, as its name indicates, follows the Mphongolo River, a major tributary of the Shingwedzi.
The road passes through various habitats where different wildlife can be found. In some places the river does not have any surface water (although it may still run under the sand) while in others, particularly when the terrain becomes hillier, water accumulates in waterholes that attract good amount of wildlife.
Below is what we found in one of these river bends that I believe was the Ribye waterhole.
A picture of the view:
We stopped the car and watched, enjoying the moment. After a while, we noted that we have missed some other beasts that were also present, apart from the crocodiles…
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The above picture should help…
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However, the following will leave no doubts…
At some stage, while entertained watching the action in the water edge closer to us, a movement caught our eyes in the rocks further away. We saw a flash of pink and realized that the rocks were in fact a pod of hippo. They had been there all the time, lying quietly enjoying the sunshine and too lazy to move to the point that their exposed bodies were dry!
We spotted this sign at Skukuza Camp in the Kruger National Park. One would have thought that, if there was a tree that gives sausages, instead of such a sign there would be one promoting the sale of fried ones or at least a fridge to collect them for later!
But these are the fruits of the aptly named sausage tree (Kigelia africana), solid fruits that could weigh over 10 kg although more often less than that but that, if they fall on your head, they could give you a headache, perhaps worse than if they fall on the bonnet of your car!
Camping at risk of falling sausages!
The sausages that fall are consumed by a variety of animals, including humans that use them for flavouring “pombe” the local beer in Kenya.
Before that, it produces beautiful scarlet flowers that are not only decorative but also animal food. This young baboon is picking the best sweet bits!
While working in Mozambique about 12 years ago, we frequently visited the Kruger National Park as it was quite easy to get from Maputo to its southern entrance through the Crocodile bridge. Although the favourite camp for the family was Lower Sabie, we also visited Biyamiti Bush Camp, a favourite of mine.
“Biyamiti” is a word in the Shangaan language, which means “a fence of sharp wooden spears”(1). Built in 1991, it is the most recent of the bushveld camps in the Kruger Park and I like it as it has only 15 cottages and it has a small but interesting area that only the camp residents can drive in.
Some camps keep Visitors books that go back several years where people write their experiences while staying at that camp. I always read some of the more recent comments to get the latest information on animal sightings, just in case. At one of the bungalows a lady that clearly frequented the place talked about the “leopard tree” where, according to her, years back a leopard could frequently be seen with its kills (we looked for it but did not find it). There were also many references of finding leopards on the access road to the camp but we also missed them although we heard them close by at night!
At that bungalow I got my first surprise when I saw that someone that signed as Chris Barnard stayed there in 1993. I believe he was no other than Dr. Christiaan Barnard, the surgeon that performed the first heart transplant in 1967. (2)
At another bungalow I found that Lindsay Scott (with her family) stayed there in 2009. I believe her to have been the well-known Zimbabwean wildlife artist (3). Luckily I have bought some of her prints and a great painting of a pair of crowned cranes that I cherish greatly today!
(1) I think this is an ambitious translation for one word, but I cannot find another.
To change a bit, I offer you a rather different “spot” today.
One of the main attractions of Mana Pools National Park in Zimbabwe (apart from the river, the light, the various campsites, the wild dogs, the elephants, the lions and I stop there naming just a few!) is to be able to walk through the park despite it holding the Big 4 (sadly the rhino is no longer there).
While walking is a great way to explore the park you must be careful as, often, you do not see the animals until you are too close for comfort and you need to be prepared to respond appropriately. This is one of the cases that seems incredible until it happens to you.
Imagine that you are walking there now, what can you see?
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What look like tree trunks, suddenly become legs and they start moving!
You had just disturbed the siesta of a large elephant and it is coming your way!
You realized that it is a bull elephant but the most important thing at that time is to back down slowly and start taking pictures through a zoom lens!
Our first journey to Mombasa was not by car but by train. We took the train that run everyday leaving Nairobi at 19:00hs and arriving at Mombasa the following morning at 06:00hs. We were advised to buy First Class tickets as these gave you access to a sleeping coach.
The Ugandan railway was born in the late 19th century, when European countries were engaged in the “scramble for Africa” and the British were worried about German expansionism in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and French interests in Sudan. It was an imperative undertaking for Britain (to keep its interests in Egypt) to have access to the source of the Nile, Lake Victoria.
Connecting Britain’s territories on the Kenyan coast to the shore of lake Victoria in Uganda by rail was considered the solution. The project created such a clamour in the British Parliament that it ended up known as the “Lunatic Line”, a name given to it by Charles Miller, who wrote its history [1].
However it was Henry Labouchère, writer and politician, that in 1896 attacked the then Foreign Minister Curzon’s backing of the idea with a satirical poem that called the project “a lunatic line” [2]
A train on bridge of the Uganda Railway leading from Mombassa to Nairobi; insert in lower right-hand corner shows the train at Mau Summit. Credit: United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division.
Despite dissidence the British government marched on with the plans, and sent Sir George Whitehouse to build the railway. Work on the one-metre gauge railway commenced in the port of Mombasa in May 1896 and thousands of workers were recruited from India to start construction on the railway and all the materials, from sleepers to steam engines, were brought from Britain.
Soon the Lunatic express ran into severe trouble such as the lack of water at Tatu and the man-eating lions that threatened to halt construction at Tsavo. However, five million pounds (today £ 660 million) and about 2,500 dead workers later, in 1901 the railway line arrived to Kisumu (then Port Florence) in the shores of Lake Victoria.
The building of the railway was an amazing feat of engineering that succeeded in joining the British protectorate of Mombasa to the colony of Uganda, uniting the disparate ethnic groups in between and consolidated a country today known as Kenya!
The train gained a “romantic” fame with the early settlers and visitors alike as migration to Kenya was promoted in Britain with the hope that the commercial traffic that this would create would pay back such a high investment.
A poster promoting the Uganda Railway. Picture taken by bushsnob from a copy of the poster acquired in Kenya at the tme of the journey.Theodore Roosevelt and traveling companions mount the observation platform of the Uganda Railway. Credit: Wikimedia, Public domain.
Luckily, when we got to the Nairobi Railway Station with its grey arches and the Nairobi sign hardly legible, the railway’s cost was not remembered and the man-eaters were not interfering with the running of the train. We soon found our names written on cards attached to the outside of our carriage and we boarded.
Locomotive with fuel tanks in Kampala. Credit: Iwoelbern / Public domain.
The old brown-leather padded carriages were very clean and the seats comfortable. After settling in we waited for the train to move but before this happened, the in the Sleeping car assistant came to check our tickets and to ask us if we wished to have dinner at 21:30hs or at 22:30hs.
As we were feeling hungry we chose the first shift and a few minutes afterwards we heard the whistles of the Stationmaster and the loud horn of the train while we felt the pull of the locomotive and heard the steadily increasing chugging sound and then we were moving!
Slowly we moved through the station and then gradually away from it and, still slowly, through the outskirts where most people ignored us but some returned our greetings and some children shouted “muzungu!, muzungu!”[3] at us. Gradually it gathered some more speed and the the clickety-clackety sound of the wheels passing over the fish plates that join the rails started to become more frequent and we were on our way, faster now!
After a while it was time to move to the dining car and we were impressed by its neatness and luxury. The car was lined with brown-red leather and old fans gently turned moving the air inside the carriage.
Clearly dinner was a serious affair. Waiters, wearing fezzes and white gloves helped us to find our table and be seated at our reserved places. The first course of the three-course menu was immediately brought. It was a hot soup that would be followed by fish and roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and potatoes. Dessert was fruit crumble with excellent custard sauce.
We declined the freshly brewed Kenya coffee offer for fear of not being able to sleep. All dishes and drinks were served on crockery embossed with the logo of the East African Railways and Harbours Corporation, which had been defunct since 1977 but that were still in use!
Dinner over, as new commensals were arriving, we left, satisfied with our meal. We arrived at our cabin to find it transformed into a bedroom with immaculate starched sheets and pillows monogrammed with the same East African Railways logo. The change was such that I went out to check if we were in the right cabin!
Mabel slept soundly but I had difficulties as my bed was placed across the track so to say and every time that the train changed speed I would roll backwards and forwards and I feared falling until its speed stabilized again. The whistle sound and the brakes’ hiss and screech when the train slowed down did not add to my comfort either!
So, although the train was great from the historical and glamour sides, it was not a sleep coach for me. Lucky Mabel woke up just before we entered Mombasa!
The early morning arrival in hot and sticky Mombasa, coming from the rather cold and cloudy Nairobi, was like a miracle that truly brought me back to the early days of the train. The station was like a beehive with people vying with each other to get our luggage and offering you tropical fruits and all sorts of other goods! It was clearly a station with special character.
Once outside the station, the light was unbelievable and we needed to spend sometime adjusting to it to be able to find our transport that would take us to our hotel where I could have a “morning siesta” to recover my lost sleep while Mabel enjoyed the Mombasa markets under the tropical heat.
Unfortunately, after our time in Kenya, the railways service from Nairobi and Mombasa gradually deteriorated [4] and started running increasing delays and it could take the train 24 hours to do the journey we did in less than 12. Often the train would breakdown in truly dark areas or, if lucky, you could be stranded at Voi or other stations until repairs could be carried out. Although it still had a romantic touch, it was wearing thinner and it was just a question of time until its final journey.
When a new train known as the “Madaraka Express” started to be built by the Chinese, the fate of the Lunatic Express was sealed and it has then been replaced for a train that now takes 4.5 hours to get to Mombasa.
The train started to operate in May 2017 but, as the Lunatic Express it has also been the target of severe criticism due to its high cost of £2.5 billion, Kenya’s most expensive infrastructure project since independence [5] and comparatively even more expensive that the Lunatic line!
We have no desire to take the new train but prefer to still remember that we were lucky to taste the last voyages of what was one of the classic trips the world had to offer.
Footnotes
[1] Miller, C. The Lunatic Express: An Entertainment in Imperialism. Head of Zeus Editor. Kindle edition. Originally published by Futura; First Thus edition (1977).
[2]
What it will cost no words can express;
What is its object no brain can suppose;
Where it will start from no one can guess;
Where it is going to nobody knows;
What is the use of it none can conjecture;
What it will carry none can define...
And in spite of George Curzon's superior lecture,
"It is clearly naught but a lunatic line."
See: https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001241674/end-of-road-for-first-railway-that-defined-kenya-s-history
After my FAO Fellowship ended and I joined the ICIPE and my work shifted towards the understanding of the resistance that some cattle have against ticks. Some colleagues there were working on a tick vaccine while I was given the task of exploring the natural resistance that is observed among cattle in the field.
At the time there were reports of animals that were refractory to ticks while the opposite also happened, a few animals in the herd carried most of the ticks and culling them was recommended to reduce tick populations in the long term. We needed tp prove this in Kenya, in an area free of Theileriosis as the work demanded to stop the application of chemicals to kill the ticks.
Beautiful Boran bull.
After discussions with colleagues and with the agreement of the Government of Kenya’s veterinary authorities it was agreed that we would focused our work on Mutara Ranch in Laikipia District where the Agricultural Development Corporation had the National Boran Stud. They were prepared to let us work on a group of one hundred young bulls to determine their resistance status.
The group of bulls ready to start the work.
A young Boran bull, part of our study group.
Separating the animals to bring them to the pen. The yellow dots on the rumps indicate those already checked that month.
After the trial preparation period we started with the work that lasted for six months. We got a number of interesting results that confirmed the hypothesis that tick distribution in the herd was normally distributed with a few bulls carrying few and lots of ticks while most were somewhere in between.
Working. From left to right Mark, Henry, Joseph, Bushsnob, Gitau and the other Henry.
Tick collecting for identification.
A bull entering the restraining cage.
Differences on tick burdens between different bulls.
So, we decided to compare our list of best ranked bulls for tick resistance with those of the Farm Manager for physical quality and body built. Our best animals for tick resistance did not match those regarded as best by the Manager! Although this was not what we expected and a disappointment as it was clear that selection would take a longer route than anticipated, the geneticists and statisticians unanimously agreed that the consistency of the results merited continuation[1].
We then entered in collaboration discussions with geneticists from Texas’ A&M University in the United States to expand the work and, with them, planned a series of follow-up trials. Unfortunately, the research group dispersed and myself and another of the collaborators departed from Kenya and the work stopped there.
In addition to doing very interesting work, my regular visits to Mutara gave me a great opportunity to explore some areas of the Northern Frontier District, a fascinating area that I mentioned in my previous post. These safaris follow next!
A decision made in 1925 by the British Colonial Office in London turned the NFD of Kenya into a buffer zone, to curb the influence of a southern influx from the horn of Africa of both Muslims from Somalia and Christians from Ethiopia. The buffer zone excluded all European settlements and missionaries.
When Kenya became independent in 1963, the Somali-inhabited areas included in the NFD struggled to unite with the Somali Republic resulting in the detention of its leaders by the Kenya Government. Severe unrest followed known as the “Shifta period”. During this time the area was closed to visitors until the end of the 70’s due to security concerns but, by the time we arrived, it had been open for a couple of years without known incidents.
Kenya’s agroecological zones showing the predominance of semi-deseric and desertic areas.
The region had a semi-arid and hot desert climate with infrequent rains that vary on a yearly basis. The exception being the extremely fertile southwestern area where the Tana River supplies water to farmers. The NFD was a massive wild area combining small farming communities, huge private ranches, and conservation projects within Samburu and Maasai lands. It extended further north to even wilder lands and deserts with some little known people such as the Turkana and El Molo to name some.
Samburu manyatta.
This was the country that Wilfred Thesiger trekked while he lived in Kenya [1]. Thesiger, who passed away in 2003, is often referred to as the last of the old-time explorers, having lived a life reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling and Lawrence of Arabia. He lived in Maralal until his final days.
The NFD still offered a real sense of freedom and adventure and the far away northern views of Mount Kenya reminded us that we were far away from home! Wild animals still roamed outside protection areas. Several species of gazelles, buffalo, zebra, giraffe, Somali ostrich and all kinds of predators including hyenas, lions and leopards were still in sizeable numbers and elephants were abundant.
Ol Olokwe, a dominant feature in the southern part of the NFD.
It is not possible for me to describe all the places that the NFD had to offer to avid visitors like us. We visited a few great places but the privilege of traveling across arid and hot lands inhabited by people that still kept their -for us- amazing traditions while being able to find wild animals anywhere were an irresistible offer.
We had enjoyed visiting the Samburu region protected areas (Samburu, Buffalo Springs and Shaba National Reserves) and enjoyed them as, like Tsavo, these offered a different environment that it was new to us.
A black-bellied bustard at Samburu.
Luckily, not too long after having visited the NFD I winded down my work at Intona Ranch in the Transmara and started working on the resistance of Boran cattle to ticks at a ranch in Laikipia. This change in the geographic focus enabled us to combine the work with travel in the area.
It was like this that, apart from re-visiting the Samburu region we also traveled to Wamba and the Kerio river valley (see https://bushsnob.com/2019/12/31/spanning-the-kerio-river/) and, later on, organized a safari that included Koobi Fora in the eastern shores of lake Turkana via Maralal, the Chalbi dessert and Marsabit as well as a camel trip along the Milgis River, a beautiful watercourse that winds its way through the Matthew’s Range and the Ndoto mountains.
I will, in the next posts, deal with the places and activities mentioned.
[1] Thesiger, W. (1994). My Kenya Days. London: Harper Collins, 224p. He has also written two classic books of travel and exploration, “The Marsh Arabs” and “Arabian Sands,” and a engrossing autobiography, “The Life of My Choice.”
In the lake Baringo area the Kerio, one of the longest rivers in Kenya, coming from the Amasya Hills (on the equator) and west of lake Bogoria, flows towards the north through the fertile Kerio valley between the Tugen Hills and the Elgeyo Escarpment. It continues its way to the north through semi-arid country where it has carved narrow valleys, some very deep. Then, it enters in the southern end of lake Turkana. Together with the Turkwel river it contributes to almost all the river water that flows into lake Turkana.
The information we got was that one of the gorges known as the Cheploch gorge was so narrow that it could have a leg on each side while watching the river gushing through on its way to lake Turkana! We thought that it was a good reason to explore an area we did not yet know.
So, once we were in lake Baringo, we extended our trip and drove about through Marigat and Kabernet to reach the “famous” gorge. Marigat, our first populated area after about 20 km was then a small and dusty town inhabited by people from the Tugen, Njemps and Pokot communities who are mainly pastoralists. We passed it and went on to Kabarnet, 40 km further on where, despite sounding like a wine-producing area, we did not see any vines, unless they used papayas for the brew!
It was in the road from Kabarnet to Iten that the Cheploch gorge was found, just after the village of Ainamoj where the road crossed the river. The river had really carved a very deep gorge, estimated at 70m deep and very narrow, but not narrow enough to span it and even if it would have been, looking down at the river’s strength, I would have declined the offer!
The gorge at the time of our visit. Looking at the picture today, I thought I could have spanned it!
However, the gorge was indeed amazing and the trip worthwhile as it took us to one of the “secret” areas of Kenya at the time.
While writing this post I learnt that, after our departure, an “industry” had developed by local people not to help you to span the river but of divers offering to jump from the edge of the gorge for a fee!
A rather different seen today!
Although in 2016 the Government stopped this activity after one of the divers died [1], it resumed a while later and it is still taking place as there are videos dated May 2019 that show the jumpers in action as there are visitors that continue to pay to see people risking their lives!
