Sea of fluttering pink

Landing in Nairobi airport, as we walked from the entrance to the immigration counter, the hustle and bustle reminded me of Mumbai airport. Outside we were greeted by our driver Hamza, who led us to our safari jeep. A three-hour drive brought us to Amboseli and the Kibo Safari Camp. The manager welcomed us with a charming smile and a glass of refreshing passion fruit juice.

Our tents were pitched on a raised wooden platform supported by poles and covered by a thatched roof. The doors and windows were made of cloth and could be zipped close or open. Inside, the tent was cosy with all modern comforts.

Stepping outside our room we stood transfixed — right in front was the spectacular sight of the snow-capped, flat-topped Mount Kilimanjaro.

After a sumptuous lunch we set out for our game drive in the Amboseli National Park. At the entrance to the park we stopped to get a permit. Half-a-dozen Maasai women and a man ran towards us from their settlement close by. This ethnic group of semi-nomadic people is famous for its rich cultural heritage, tradition and customs.

They were carrying necklaces, bangles, earrings and handicrafts. The man was the first to reach us and he pushed through the vehicle's window two statues of a Maasai couple.

The statues, made of wood, were beautiful and attired in the traditional ‘Kanga’ dress of the Maasai tribe, complete with beaded jewellery.

“How much,” I asked.

“Okay, my price $50 for the pair,” he said in slightly accented English.

As I looked at him aghast, my wife, Madhavi, took over the bargaining with the confidence of a veteran. Just then my daughter, Ankita, tried to take a photo of an elderly tribal woman. Her subject promptly demanded, “Photo, one dollar.”

We were taken aback. Hamza, who had returned with the permit, explained: “The Maasai are favourite subjects for tourists. They realise this and demand money for posing for photographs.”

Our vendor now had another handle to bargain. “Last price - $40 and the photo of the old woman for free.”

Finally, after 18 minutes of negotiation, Madhavi clinched the deal. “$18 and the photo of the old woman for free,” she declared, her eyes shining as if she had just climbed Mount Kilimanjaro on stilts!

As we entered the park, Hamza explained that ‘amboseli’ is Swahili for ‘wind devil’, or whirlwind, which commonly occurs here.

During the drive we sighted a number of animals — ostrich, zebra, giraffe and elephant. The sheer variety of antelopes on view was fascinating, including the funny looking wildebeest, the strong and sturdy eland, the elegant topi, the attractive Thomson’s gazelle, the lissom Grant’s gazelle, the athletic impala, the lithe hartebeest and the bonsai dikdik.

One of the most riveting sights was of a cheetah striking a stately pose in the plains while gazelles gambolled not far away. We also sighted a lion snoozing. Hamza mentioned that an average lion sleeps 20 hours a day.

We saw plenty of hyenas emerging out of holes in the ground, stepping from behind culverts or simply slinking along — their lean, mean faces not easy to forget.

Amboseli’s dust is ancient volcanic ash, whose salt crystals shimmer on the ground surface during the dry season, creating mirages. During the drive, twice we asked Hamza to lead us to a sumptuous looking lake only to be told it was a mirage.

The Marketing Mayhem

We had heard a lot about the Maasai Market, where everything produced by, and related to the tribe is sold. And we were certainly not disappointed. Men and women sat on the ground with their wares spread out in front, hawking at the top of their voice. There were at least 500 stalls selling everything from curios to calabashes, paintings to chains, statues to slippers, handicrafts to dresses, necklaces to knives, beads to chains, et al. Adding to the noisy chaos was a woman reading out sermons from the Bible in Swahili.

Interestingly, however, the sellers were not the tribals but middlemen. Maasai has become a brand name in East Africa and there are many ready to cash in on it.

Earlier during the day, I had visited the Doon Holm Catholic Primary School to conduct a storytelling session for students from class seven and eight. Although I was initially unsure how I would connect with the kids, we ended up having a rocking, rollicking sixty minutes of unadulterated fun.

The headmistress turned out to be a nun from Mangalore, and she invited us along for an Afrikaans Christian Wedding at a church in the school campus. A band played a rambunctious number and many people were dancing to it. A car pulled up and out tumbled a dozen little girls dressed in pristine white, with colourful beads adoring their dress and their braided hair. These beautiful ‘flower girls’ were escorted by little gentlemen nattily attired in black suits. The bride, in all her finery, alighted from a car and all of them entered the church in a procession.

The Flamingo Fiesta

A sea of pink in a lake of blue!

That’s how we found the spectacle of thousands of flamingos resting on the azure waters of Nakuru lake.

At the Nakuru National Park, 160 km from Nairobi, the lake is one of the Rift Valley soda lakes, and its abundance of algae attracts flamingos in lakhs, creating one of the greatest bird shows on Planet Earth. Of the two species of flamingo — the Lesser flamingo with its deep-red carmine bill and pink plumage, and the Greater with its black-tipped bill — the former are in greater number. Although ‘nakuru’ means “dust or dusty place”, we found the place wasn’t so much dusty as it was crowded. The drive from the park entrance to the lake was interesting. We spotted a tree hyrax, which looks like a rat but is five times the size and considered the closest living relative of the elephant. Wildebeest, antelopes and zebras abound here too.

It was here too that we spotted our first pair of rhinos in Kenya. Huge, muscular and tough, they reminded me of the film Hatari I had seen years ago. Scores of baboons scurried for cover as our jeep approached. However, one big fella just sat by the road, scratching himself and staring unblinkingly, as if daring us to try anything funny. We lost the battle of patience and moved out of the park, bidding adieu to the lovely birds whose existence, we learnt, is being threatened by that monster called ‘progress’.

As we drove back to the airport, I pressed my mind’s rewind button and relived kaleidoscope Kenya over and over again.

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