Advertisement
Published: April 13th 2013
Edit Blog Post
The schedule had another game drive next day morning and then drive to Ngorongoro crater after. Since we had seen most animals, we decided to skip the morning game drive in Serengeti and instead head to the crater in morning. It had rained quite a bit at night and I was quite worried that we will see more overflowing streams. The drive out of campsite was smooth. There was a overflown stream, but jeep sailed through it.
On the way was the biggest surprise of all. We saw a cheetah. Its a rare shy animal and we were quite lucky to spot one. It was just sitting there on a rock, looking from side to side waiting for a hunt. Since we had so much time, we sat watching the cheetah. Then suddenly it must have spotted something and it ran with lightening speed. This is what we wanted, to see a real hunt. The driver backed the car and far away we could see a impala. Then we spotted the cheetah again. It was stocking the impala, lying low in the grass. Then suddenly it
shot up and ran after the impala. The impala was fast and then there was a chase. The chase ended unsuccessfully for the cheetah. Our guide whose favourite animal is cheetah was very disappointed. He wanted to defend the cheetah and said that it does not happen normally. Cheetah is the fastest animal. This time when impala was running, it was spalshing water in cheetah's eyes, that's why it missed. He was so serious about it, that we just had to suppress our laughter.Perfect end to the Serengeti trip.
Into the crater
On the drive to Ngorongoro, we saw the w
ilderbeasts, zebra and impalas again. They had travelled further along towards Serengeti in last couple of days. We were at the crater soon. Crater was looking absolutely gorgeous from the rim. Into the crater, the first thing we saw was a sleeping lion. So many lions on the trip! The sleeping lion was real cute, totally undisturbed by all the cars starting and stopping next to it. I was just waiting that at any moment it will wake up and shout at us all for disturbing. We also saw a bunch of
ostrich there and
Food
Our cook made great effort to cook Indian food :) pink flamingo on the lake inside. For lunch we stopped at a nice peaceful lake. There were some hippos in the lake. The main attraction of crater is
Rhino. You cannot see them anywhere else. We also wanted to see some more elephants as we only saw them at Lake Manyara.
The game drive into crater was looking like a disappointment. No doubt that it was beautiful, and we saw the lion, but by now lions had become a routine signting. After lunch we drove around some more, saw some more wilderbeast, zebra and warthogs. These do not migrate as there are always green pastures inside the creater. Then we spotted some elephants, not too near though. Then just when we were returning, there it was, a rhino and its cub. They were quite far, but still we could see from binocs and from the 10x zoom of my camera. That completed the big 5 animals and everything for us. Later we saw even more rhinos, still from far. I was quite happy with the whole trip even though we skipped one game drive in Serengeti. We were ready to get back to civilization.
We stayed at a camp-lodge. It was a nice resort type place. There were permanent tents with beds. It was all I needed, no more sleeping on floor. It was good to relax there after the long trip. For dinner, Msafiri prepared Indian food, layered paratha and black daal which was very Ethiopean in taste. I was quite impressed by both the driver/guide and cook. They were both quite fun. If you are planning to go, I would highly recommend going with them. More pictures from Safari -
http://picasaweb.google.com/tulika.agrawal/Safari#
Advertisement
Tot: 0.321s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 10; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0748s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb