Walking with lion
blood. Younger ones — mostly guiding school graduates — speak excellent English but might have less bush experience. Unusually, some are women. All have a passion for wildlife that is palpable.
As I said, this isn’t your average safari. Instead of rushing to the elephants we see roaming in the distance, we home in on their poo for a lecture about the difference between elephant and hippo droppings (elephants have sticks in theirs). We watch a female leopard calmly spraying the trees to attract nearby males.
Then we stumble on a gripping scene. “Introduce the sighting to guests,” Clint softly suggests to the guides. “Then try to be quiet while they take it all in.”
Hidden in a bush are three tiny lion cubs and their mum, lying silent. Four huge buffalos caked in mud walk towards them. If they see the cubs they will kill them, Clint explains, driven by a protective instinct for their own future. “Maybe nothing will happen,” he whispers. “Or it could be a once-ina-lifetime sighting. Let’s wait it out.”
We wait in our Land Cruisers, all 13 of us silent. One by one, the buffalos amble past the bush, until the last bull pauses and peers straight in the
lions’ direction. Eventu- ally, it moves on. “Those cubs came within three metres of losing their lives,” says Clint.
My interest in birds is not deep, yet Clint’s enthusiasm is contagious. Flicking through field guides, his students are hooked too, identifying species and answering their trainer’s regular refrain: “Tell me a power-fact about…”
The facts pour out. The greater honeybird will lead people to beehives by singing, hoping for beeswax as its reward. Only five of Africa’s 15 kingfishers actually eat fish. The tiny 10cm pied wheatear will fly non-stop across the entire Sahara on its 9,000km journey from Nor way t o Ke ny a . My disinterest turns to fascination. Our walks, t o o, elicit enc yclopaedic information. We don’t get far as we’re constantly stopping to study insects, rocks, flowers and trees, frogs and damselflies, butterflies, poo and paw prints. We spot hippos, a newborn giraffe and a lone hartebeest but we’re mesmerised by an army of Matabele ants. This is a nature walk like no other.
On night drives, we learn about astronomy and meet weird creatures such as the bubblingg kassina,, a frog with a distinctive bubble-poppingping call,ca and the zorillzorilla that looks like a mongoose crcrossed with a skskunk. Lions pprowl silently past our vehicle searching fofor supper as a tiny bushbababy, all eyes and ears, scurries away.
The followingfoll morninging we leave camp before sunrise to experience the dawn chorus. “The idea is just to sit here in the dark with your guests,” Clint whispers to his students. “Let’s listen to the waking of the day. We experience this every day and we know how wonderful it is. Imagine if you’d never heard it before…”
On cue, the birds start performing. Songsters such as the nightjar, rufousnaped lark, ring-necked dove, striped kingfisher, guinea fowl and African cuckoo take turns to chime in until the birdsong builds to a beautiful crescendo. The cow-like smell of buffalos wafts our way. Impalas’ dainty hooves trot past our vehicle. In the dark, a hyena laughs, a lion roars, a jackal yelps. This is what Pyramids of Life is all about. As dawn breaks, the Lion King moment is back.
Details: Kenya
(01980 849160; aardvarksafaris.co.uk) offers a sevennight trip from £4,765pp including flights with Kenya Airways and all travel, conservancy fees, six nights on the Pyramids of Life itinerary (serian.com), and one night in Nairobi.
magicalkenya.com