Kenya under canvas
Air Kenya delivered us to a waterlogged Ol Kiombo airstrip after a few short puddle jumps around the Mara. It seemed that the short rains and the long rains had combined to just keep on raining. With the grass inside the Mara Reserve towering over anything smaller than a baby giraffe, we were extremely pleased to be heading slightly north of the park boundary to the Olare Orok Conservancy where the grass was grazed lower and the game viewing considerably easier.
As we approached the new site for Kicheche Bush Camp (recently moved to take advantage of a stunning site amongst whistling thorn acacias) the ultra low-impact spread of 6 guests tents and the main dining tent only became evident from 100 yards. Amongst the trees and low escarpment beyond, this little stand of canvas almost goes unnoticed, which is clearly the point.
Managers Andy and Sonja were waiting to welcome us to their seasonal home and the passion with which they explained the recent game activity around camp left me in no doubt that this place had worked some magic on them as well. The primary power for the camp comes from solar panels and the hot water is delivered by bucket shower, a combination of new and old.
The guest tents though are certainly a nod towards the future; large, airy and light with separate shower room, bathroom and flush loo. Well lit by power friendly LED bulbs and anchored by a massive double bed, not too shabby! Small tented camps do not get much better than this, even more remarkable that Bush Camp is effectively mobile and doesn’t benefit from the back of house luxuries of a fixed camp – workshops, vehicle observation pits, walk-in deep freezers etc
The Bush Camp (like its sister camp further North on the Aitong Plains) is completely unfenced and over the next couple of days we saw everything from jackal to giraffe wandering straight through camp. In fact Daniel our Masai guide never managed to drive more than a few kilometres from camp before we were hunched over cameras watching the local wildlife in action. This is a region globally famed for the massive seasonal migrations driving in from the south to blanket the Mara with grazers and attendant predators. Yet with the great herds still months away we were so surrounded by animal activity that by midday we had reached sensory overload.
First light on day two found us watching a lioness carefully stalking a zebra herd, only to have her cover blown by her own team, a juvenile male who chose to stand when he should have stayed prone. Result, zebra herd scatters, lioness picks a fresh target, repeat stalk, juvenile male repeats error. We left them to it and drove 500 metres into a breeding herd of elephant grazing on the morning dew. In the distance directly behind the herd were a second pride of lions on an eland kill made during the night. The cats were strewn around the eland carcass like overstuffed furniture, enjoying the success that was eluding our first lion of the day.
That really was enough for one morning but on the drive back to camp, Daniel found us a mating lion couple just to confirm that this was serious big cat territory. This same loving couple had provided the background music for camp every night since we had arrived, what a pleasure.
Lion aside, the previous day (when we were still airborne), the English couple on game drive had seen 2 leopard and a female cheetah with 4 cubs which were subsequently chased out of the area by the larger lion pride. Predictably, conversation over lunch was centred around the wildlife that Mara veteran’s Andy and Sonja had seen since relocating from Zimbabwe. Needless to say, we didn’t even have time to cover the highlights.
We were extremely sad to leave the luxurious tents and almost private game viewing of Bush Camp but the tales of the Kicheche main camp pride that had filtered down to us had got me curious. If the guides consider Main Camp a much easier place to find big cats (after we had found lion on every single drive at Bush Camp) then what else would we find there?
A muddy hour and half of driving through three dry river beds in full flood got us to the Aitong Plains and Kicheche Mara Camp. The original and larger Kicheche property has 12 en-suite meru tents spaced out under thick varied tree cover. The rich birdsong was a complete contrast to the relative silence of Bush Camp (loved-up cats aside) and watching the sunrise from bed with a cup of tea as the dawn chorus filled the air is a great African experience.
Retrieving shoes from the Kicheche patented anti-hyena storage we met Benjamin our guide at the landcruiser and started out for the plains. We were still on the road out of camp when we ran into the Kicheche pride, about 21 of them infact, wet from the nights rain and clearly still on the hunt. A nose-to-tail train of fur and teeth filed past the cruiser en-route to a couple of (increasingly) nervous young giraffe, the arrival of a zebra herd saved the giraffe from further stress as the cats fanned out into the tree line to assess the new menu option. The zebra headed back across the lugga and the lions went with them, rather than trail the long way round to meet them on the other side, Benjamin suggested we go and look for a leopard which had dragged a gazelle up a tree the night before.
On arrival, prey and predator were still there with a hyena in patient attendance at the bottom of the tree, waiting for falling scraps. It was actually the hyena who ended up providing the action as he defended his patch from an increasingly interested selection of scavengers whilst the leopard dozed. With the large carnivore activity being excellent, it was easy to forget that at all times we were surrounded by good numbers of gazelle, zebra, topi, impala, some resident gnu and a collection of interesting avian species common on the plain including secretary bird, kori bustard and crowned crane.
Heading back to Kicheche after a bush breakfast we had one of the more unusual sightings of the day. A pair of large elephant bulls had been grazing out in the open when they switched to browsing the trees. Both keen on reaching the very top foliage, one used his braun and pushed his tree over, the second used his brain, got the protein and left the tree standing.
After five days it is safe to say that for sheer concentrated game viewing action, this was the most productive wildlife safari I have done for a few years. The Kicheche camps deliver outstanding levels of guiding in immaculate, well designed vehicles. The tented camps blend easily into the scenery and are staffed by Africans passionate about their home. They are a great working model for the Masai conservancies.