Tanzania and Zanzibar - Welcome to the Tanzania Odyssey blog

Tanzania blog with Tanzania Odyssey

2014-05-04T12:05:00.005Z

This blog is a collection of things we think are new and interesting in Tanzania and Zanzibar.

Many of these blogs are press articles concerning Tanzania or Zanzibar which we post on this blog as we find them. Please read on and feel free to post any comments you like.

For detailed information about Tanzania and Zanzibar please look at our site - www.tanzaniaodyssey.com, and click here for information about a Tanzania safari.

To view videos of the country and the various lodges please see our Video Console

Or for advice / quotes or anything else please call us in London on 44 (2) 7471 8780 or in the USA on (toll free) 1-866 356 4691

Africa: Dive of a lifetime on Pemba Island

2010-03-02T09:32:00.000Z

Africa: Dive of a lifetime on Pemba Island
The island of Pemba, north of Zanzibar, offers some of the best underwater adventures in Africa. Our diving expert Tim Ecott investigates the fish at Fundu Lagoon.

The charm of the diving at Fundu is, in part, that this is not an area where large numbers of divers will visit Photo: Alamy
The Napoleon wrasse, with its characteristic humped forehead, is more than 4ft long, a green giant with preposterous lips Photo: Corbis
Pemba forms part of the Zanzibar archipelago

An abandoned lighthouse stands sentinel as our speedboat rounds the south-western tip of Pemba. There is no actual light, but the red and white candy-striped superstructure stands out from the dense green of the casuarina pines that edge the sand with their wispy fronds. Abdullah the skipper points to a patch of surf a few yards from the jagged ironshore protruding above the clear blue Indian Ocean. "Wreck!" he mouths above the thrumming of the twin outboard engines.

The sea is mirror flat. Stretching to the west I know it reaches to the mainland of Africa 40 miles away, but there is nothing to break the pure blue except for a few triangular sails on the horizon. They are simple white hieroglyphs against an azure temple wall signalling the presence of the mashuas, the small dhows used by the fishermen of Pemba. And like our diving boat, the dhows are taking advantage of calm conditions to circumnavigate the southern tip of the island that forms part of the Zanzibar archipelago.

Divers visit this site infrequently; we are already almost an hour's boat ride from the lodge at Fundu Lagoon where I am staying. The exposed reefs are almost always ripped by strong currents and when the monsoon winds blow, the site is completely inaccessible. Today our group of half a dozen divers will try to dive the wreck of the merchant ship Paraportiani, which foundered on the reef in 1967. Denied safe passage through the Suez Canal by the Arab-Israeli War, the 300ft-long SS Paraportiani lies in less than 60ft of water, her stern still largely intact and her broken superstructure embedded in the sand. Rolling backwards into the water I discover that the calm seas above have disguised a strong northwards current, and I bury my knuckles in the seabed, pulling myself across the sand into the lee of the ship's hull. The other divers do the same, sheltering inside the coral encrusted metal. The current sweeps the water clean and I can see the entire length of the wreck as if the whole scene is above water, not below.

Hard corals have cloaked the metal, and nestling inside the stumpy fingers of pocillopora I spy a tiny yellow-spotted scorpion fish. This cryptic species somehow bends its frame around the coral and hides deep in its crevices, barely moving in daylight but ready to pounce on any smaller fish that swim too near. On the wheelhouse deck there is a tiger cowrie, its shiny shell as bright as a polished marble floor. In the dark space below deck a wall of copper-coloured sweeper fish share the space with an elegant lionfish, all bristling venomous spines and feathery fins; the reef equivalent of an attack helicopter, highly manoeuvrable and, if you are bite-sized, equally deadly.

In spite of the current, we manage an hour's dive on the shallow wreck, gradually working our way along the twisted flanks of the ship, peering beneath the mast and passing countless tiny creatures that have made the hulk their home. Red, green, yellow and pink hard corals, a purple magnificent anemone and an orange starfish with raised scarlet knobbles stand out in the sunlit shallows as if they have all been picked out with enamel paints.

Most of the diving on this side of Pemba is closer to Fundu Lagoon than the wreck site. Just 15 minutes from the resort lies Misali Island, a tiny sand-encircled island which is home to sunbirds and flying foxes. There are caves in the interior which are reputedly used for voodoo. With assistance from the World Bank, the Tanzanian Government has designated the western edge of Misali as a conservation zone, in an attempt to preserve the seaward coral reefs. This is the kind of magic I prefer to see. There are half a dozen individual dive sites here, mostly drift dives along the rich coral walls which are filled with a variety of western Indian Ocean species.

My guide is Filbert Ngelenge, a local diving instructor who knows Pemba's reefs inside out, and jokingly refers to the ocean as "his office". He came to Fundu Lagoon when the resort opened 10 years ago, having come from an inland village 10 hours' drive from the capital, Dar es Salaam. His open manner and a willingness to learn new skills attracted the attention of a diving instructor and he was offered the chance to train as a dive leader.

"My family don't understand my passion," he explains, "none of them can even swim, and they can't imagine the marine world. They understand the animals in the bush, not the ocean." Filbert is fond of nudibranchs, the tiny colourful sea slugs without a shell which divers love to see, but find difficult to spot. On one dive he is fixated by the sight of a Spanish dancer (one of the largest nudibranchs) as it lays a coil of bright pink eggs. They resemble a hair scrunchy, a fine network of tiny cells glued to the coral about 4in wide.

Filbert also knows where to find the leaf fish, small, virtually motionless predators that sit on coral heads and whose flattened bodies look exactly like a leaf swaying in the current. On each dive we vie with one another to spot something small and secretive, camouflaged among the folds of a cabbage coral or tucked inside a sponge. He spies a tiny transparent shrimp decorated with white dots, and, with the help of a cheap magnifying glass that I carry in my pocket, I find a white nudibranch decorated with black spots, both creatures smaller than my little fingernail.

Really big fish are rarer here, perhaps because of local fishing pressure on the reefs. In the deep water beside the reef slope we do see large silver kingfish, some barracuda, giant trevally and an enormous Napoleon wrasse.

The wrasse with its characteristic humped forehead is more than 4ft long, a green giant with preposterous lips that glides into the gloom. Sharks, too, are a rarity here, though they may be more common on the eastern side of Pemba than here, close to the lagoon shallows. But the reef is filled with life, and there are corals hard and soft, barrel sponges and anemones where clown fish guard their eggs protected within a forest of stinging tentacles.

The charm of the diving at Fundu is, in part, that this is not an area where large numbers of divers will visit. Fundu Lagoon has only 18 rooms, a small spa, a pool and a stretch of fantasy white sand that make it feel like its own island within Pemba. The aesthetics are luxurious without losing an African feel, and the staff mainly drawn from nearby villages to which the hotel has contributed funds for building wells, a school and latrines. It is part of a connection fostered by Fundu's owners, who include London fashion designer Ellis Flyte. "I originally thought that Fundu could be a holiday home," she tells me. "But that would have been selfish, and would not have built a relationship with the islanders. The whole project is now something so much bigger, and I hope more valuable."

The guests at Fundu are largely unaware of the community relationships that produce the special atmosphere here. They arrive after a 20-minute transfer by launch from the ramshackle docks at Mkoani, and a half-hour taxi ride from Chake-Chake airport. Getting here is enough of an African adventure for most, and they seem happy to drink by the pool or at the sunset bar set on stilts above the lagoon without pushing themselves into too much strenuous activity. Kayaks are available for exploring the mangroves and hotel staff will take you to visit the villages on foot if you wish.

Walking through fields of cassava, crowds of children followed me, the bravest of them darting up to touch the hand of this mzungu who has come from an unimaginable land.

At sunrise on my last day of diving we set off from the wooden jetty with a full moon still visible in a yellowing amber sky. We head past Misali and over to Uvinje Wall. The wall is still in shadow, delaying the underwater dawn and keeping us in an underwater dream. In the half-light we descend onto an expanse of cabbage coral that covers the leaf slope like some giant mille-feuille pastry. A female hawksbill turtle shies away from our group, abandoning her coral breakfast. In the folds of the cabbage coral I find a black-spotted puffer fish barely awake. It has a face like a pug, with large black eyes and a body of dusty blue. And, like a dog, it has curled its stumpy tail forwards as if to wrap itself against the morning chill.

Divers at Fundu are pampered. Their air tanks are carried, their gear assembled and afterwards it is rinsed and dried ready for the next day. After the early morning immersion we are whisked to Baobab Beach at Misali where wicker hampers contain lunch. There is tabbouleh, watermelon and papaya, fish kebabs and, as if we had room, coconut cake. And there is time, Filbert says, for a siesta on one of the sunloungers on the beach before the next dive.

reproduced from the Telegraph

Tanzania Safari

Climbing Kilimanjaro - reproduced from the Daily mail

2010-02-28T18:51:00.001Z

The Full article can be read at the Daily Mail

Tanzania: The climb to Mount Kilimanjaro's summit is one of life's great challenges By Christopher Hudson Last updated at 5:26 PM on 28th February 2010

The ninth circle of Hell was what it was, the one in which repentant sinners are clasped in everlasting ice. In the darkness, shadowy figures were splayed around the crater walls, crouched and stumbling.
Somewhere near me a film crew was packing up on a shelf of rock - or was I seeing phantoms as I struggled to get oxygen into my lungs?
Then, all at once, across the far side of the crater's icy lip, emerged a thin, fiery orange bar of intense light. At 19,000 ft, sunrise had finally reached the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Giant: Mount Kilimajaro towers over Kenya
There were three of us making the attempt on the summit. Spring chickens we were not: our combined age was 196.
One of us, a lawyer, had trained in the SAS; another had skippered a small boat across the Atlantic. Then there was me, a pen-pusher who made up occasional doubles at tennis. I was the one to blame for bringing us to this place. When I was little, my Dad worked in Uganda, and he used to take us on safari to the Tanzanian coast.
Among the clouds in the sky, one never seemed to move, until, awesomely, 50 miles away, it resolved into a mighty snow-capped mountain. Longing to see Mount Kilimanjaro before the snows melted, I pestered the others to join me.
We knew this was no picnic. The summit of Kilimanjaro is the highest place in Africa; it is also the one of the highest points in the world that can be reached without mountaineering equipment - ropes and pitons.
Some 1,500ft higher than Everest base camp, it presents formidable obstacles. The air is thin, your movements slow. Altitude sickness can tighten a band of steel round the top of the head and force even the fittest climbers to descend if they have gone up the mountain too quickly.

Expedition: Christopher and friends embark on their mission
As the skipper wisely remarked, the battle would be won or lost in the preparation. If you don't want to feel that you have come half way across the world for nothing, those have to begin early - which means getting into training.
I lost count of the people who warned me that without rigorous exercise my climb was doomed to failure. Long walks weren't enough: I had to practise walking up steep hills.
Better still, run up them. Only if I was really fit did I stand a chance. My son's advice hit home hardest. 'You'll probably make it, Dad,' he said, 'But why cause yourself so much unnecessary pain?'
It's horses for courses. If you think you are overweight and flabby, then book a month's subscription to your local gym and seek some advice.
If you are already reasonably fit, don't knacker yourself: on most routes up Kilimanjaro you will have three or four days slow walking to get yourself in good shape. On Kilimanjaro it is no advantage to be super-fit. Just be sure that your boots are broken in.
Having said that, both the skipper and I sneaked off separately to put in some training. The skipper was observed pedalling furiously down country lanes, and my family press-ganged me at the last moment into visiting a gym, where I plodded up a sloping running-board that simulated hill-training.

Dire predictions assailed us on all sides. The skipper's doctor suggested we were mad even to attempt the climb at our age.
My surgery kindly reminded me that if I left my malaria pills behind, and didn't have all my vaccinations, I could be dead within hours from a single mosquito bite.
Then there was cerebral oedema, which can render you unconscious in a few minutes at high altitude and even be fatal if the victim is not brought down the mountain without delay. I began to wonder what I was getting into.
Our best hope was Diamox, a wonderdrug, which helps protect against altitude sickness. Opinion is divided about whether you should wait to take Diamox until you start the trek.
For the record, two of us started swallowing our Diamox capsules well before getting to Tanzania and the third when he set out, and none of us was sick or had more than a light headache.
It made a difference that, on the Rongai route, we had five days to acclimatise before the final assault on the summit.
People who took only four days, we were told, had about a 50 per cent chance of summiting. Five days and the proportion went up to 75 per cent. I was light on my feet, a good walker. I saw no reason why I shouldn't get to the top.

We left our hotel on a Sunday at the end of January, about half way through the Tanzanian high summer. It was a five-hour drive, on rough roads, to reach the Rongai gate.
There are seven or eight routes up the mountain: we'd chosen one of the remotest, not just to acclimatise but to have the mountain views to ourselves.
Walking through fields and what might have been Kentish woodlands, we couldn't understand why our two guides, Charles and Oforo, insisted on us walking 'poli, poli' (slowly, slowly). By the Monday, as the climb got steeper, we saw the sense of it.

We trudged through a barren moonscape, always ahead of us the sight of Kili's fabulous sister mountain, Mawenzi, Gothic-spired and turreted. There was no sound except for our breathing and the tapping of our walking poles; nothing moved except for wheeling birds of prey.
We fell into a pattern: one guide leading, then me, then the skipper, flicking his pole, and finally the lawyer, a tower of strength who didn't need a pole but tramped on regardless, muttering 'Keep going, keep going.' The second guide, 'Tail-end Charlie', took up the rear.

We stopped at campsites near barren caves where our porters set up our three-man tent and produced omelettes, popcorn and pints of warming Kilimanjaro Tea. 'Eat, you must eat,' Oforo told us. You must be strong to go all the way.'
For two whole days we criss-crossed the flank of Kilimanjaro, at one point reaching a hut at 15,750ft before descending again. We could have summited from there, we thought, but the guides thought otherwise. 'Poli, poli', better to be safe than sorry.
Wednesday, 4 February, D-Day, and at the height of a Tanzanian summer it began to snow. Woken at 22.30hrs, we put on boots, thermal leggings, three pairs of trousers and as many socks, fleeces and gloves as would fit.
The guides cast around in this unfamiliar terrain, their head-torches lighting the snow ahead. The outline of the mountain was no longer friendly; it reared almost vertically above us - and I had a streaming cold.
I saw a summit ridge and called out to the lawyer: 'You'll see the sunrise from the top!' But it wasn't the summit ridge; it was more steps that zig-zagged on and on, past other ridges and more peering faces as we struggled to move our leaden feet.

Into the crater at Gilman's Point, I was beyond exhaustion, until a desperate scramble finally got me to the top. Yes, I got there. I did what I had set out to do - but was it worth it? Would I recommend it?
After all, I summited in a state of near-collapse and had to be led down the mountain by Oforo, victorious, but thoroughly exhausted.
The answer is that it is one of the last great challenges left on the planet that can be accomplished without specialist equipment or knowledge, by anybody between the ages of 15 and 80, and if you meet the challenge on a clear day, you will know what it is to have the world at your feet.
Travel factsTanzania Odyssey (020 7471 8780, tanzaniaodyssey.com) has a six-night climb up the Rongai route, including guides, porters and tented accommodation for £1,800pp on a full-board basis. Includes B&B the nights before and after in Onsea House, Arusha.

For more info about a Tanzania Safari click here

Zimbabwe

2010-02-27T14:23:00.001Z

For a company that specialises in Tanzania you may think it odd that we are reproducing an article on Zimbabwe. But after so may years in the wilderness Zimbabwe is finally coming back onto the safari scene - happy reading: - for the original article please see Zimbabwe Safari article

Sitting alone at Pamushana Lodge beside a plunge pool that overlooks the vast Malilangwe Wildlife Reserve, it is hard to believe that I am in Zimbabwe, a country that has dominated the news with stories of cholera, hyper-inflation and the murder of white farmers.

But tourism here is bouncing back. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office no longer has official alerts warning against travel to the country.

Albee Yeend, the general manager of Africa for Steppes Travel, which has just reintroduced its Zimbabwe tours, says: “The fact that the US dollar is now the main trading currency has made a huge difference. Zimbabwe is such a jewel of a country.

"Before the troubles it was one of our biggest sellers. People may feel that they shouldn’t travel there because they don’t like Mugabe, but Zimbabweans are very dependent on tourism. They need it. Fortunately, investment is coming back.”

Pamushana is one of the best examples of a new generation of safari lodge in Zimbabwe. Set in the Lowveld, the former ranch was bought in 1994 by the Zimbabwean-owned and run Malilangwe Trust, with funding from the American billionaire Paul Tudor Jones.

For years the trust ran the property as a private wildlife conservancy, but in 2007 Jones signed up the South African safari operator Singita to refurbish and manage Pamushana as a high-end, low-impact lodge.

From the main lodge — all thatched, open sides and scattered with sofas, poolside loungers and four-poster outdoor beds — stretch endless vistas that change with the light. Thousands of trees speckle the plains. In the distance, I can spot giraffe. At the back, above lawns overhung with baobabs and strangling figs, I can hear birds chirruping in the morning light. It’s as close as you can get to an African Eden.

Unlike most safari camps in South Africa, which share game reserves with other lodges, Pamushana has the entire 40,500-hectare Malilangwe reserve to itself — and since the camp sleeps a maximum of 16, everyone has a fair amount of space to enjoy. Guests pay US$800 (£517) a night to stay at one of the most stylish places in Africa. (You can take over the camp privately — as did Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas — for $19,000 a night.)

The Malilangwe Trust ploughs profits into conservation. In 1997 $1 million was spent buying 28 black rhino from KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa, the largest wildlife purchase and reintroduction yet. This has brought the rhino population up to 58 black and 72 white (protected by 70 armed game guards recruited from the surrounding villages). Thirty-three roan antelope — a species that had died out — were reintroduced.

There are lion prides, more than 30 leopard and so many elephants that the resort’s management is desperately trying to persuade the Government to issue a permit so that some can be moved.

The game reserve has largely been left alone by poachers, thanks, says the manager, Jason Turner, to the camp’s relationship with local communities. The scale of Malilangwe Trust’s involvement in local welfare is like no other in Africa.

Each year it ploughs between $1.5 and $2 million into projects that benefit about 10,000 people in local villages and on former farms. They include education programmes, bursaries for children to go to school, a clinic and giving seed to local chiefs. Every day, with the help of other donors, it feeds 25,000 under-8s with porridge — the only meal that many will get that day.

Throughout the area, everyone I speak to says the same: that Malilangwe is their only means of survival. “Because they rely on us so heavily, we have been able to educate them about the value of wildlife,” Turner says. “Go to other places around here and they’re littered with traps and snares. The game has been written off. But, thankfully, most of ours is left alone. And so are we.”

This, for the visitor, is a blessing. During our four days there, we see everything you could hope to on safari, from roaring lion to baby rhino. And, on top of that, we indulge in the luxuries for which Singita has become well known: capacious bathrooms; private pools; friendly, accommodating staff; enthusiastic game guides; and a down-to-earth, relaxed atmosphere that is often absent in five-star lodges.

Luxury may be hard to stomach in a country where people struggle for food. But having seen what money from tourism can achieve in a poor area, it is difficult to advise you not to visit this little haven in Zimbabwe.

Need to know

A 12-day holiday in Zimbabwe, with four nights at Pamushana, three nights at Amalinda and three nights at Somalisa, including all road and light aircraft transfers, plus international flights with British Airways, costs £5,875pp.

Ethical Zimbabwe
In previous years I would not have advised tourists to visit Zimbabwe.

President Mugabe’s corrupt Government and Army, a politically biased police force and judiciary, poor human rights record and continued attacks on farmers do not make Zimbabwe an appealing holiday destination. However, having just visited the country, I have seen a marked improvement in the roads and food is now plentiful, thanks to the introduction of the American dollar as the currency.

A New Star in the Serengeti

2010-02-05T10:58:00.000Z

A new star is shining in the Serengeti. Olakira, meaning ‘Star’ in the language of the Maasai, is a mobile tented camp that has a fabulous new location at Mukatano, on the wild banks of the Mara River.

As well as being a very scenic river location, this is a very ‘active’ wildlife site with hippo and lion close by during the night, and elephant and wildebeest in the river for your breakfast viewing pleasure.

Anyone seeking a seriously special safari experience should consider aiming for the Serengeti, for the ultimate Tanzania safari. When the Great Migration is moving across its magnificent, wild plains, this area feels a world apart, a stunning pageant of natural life.

Now imagine camping in the midst of this landscape, a truly spectacular treat, and waking up each morning to a fully cooked breakfast, looking out over the Great Mara river, witnessing the life threatening crossing of the wildebeest through crocodile infested waters.

Consultants Tanzania Odyssey constantly revisit all of the best safari accommodation, and our Northern Tanzania expert Ed took this impressive footage on his last adventure in Olakira: Northen Tanzania safari action.

Semi-permanent mobile camps are an exciting new iteration of Northern Circuit safaris, with enough people currently travelling to warrant the existence of these fabulous mobile tented camp; large, safari tents with real beds and cooking facilities, just waiting for you to arrive, settle in and enjoy the action.

A stay here is a camping treat, with very high standards of food and service, although the focus is certainly on the wildlife, and the guiding here is truly superb. The point of being here is to settle down in the midst of the wild animal action, in a spectacular setting.
At Tanzania Odyssey we spend a great deal of time arguing the merits of the various safari experiences, but we all agree that Olakira is, without any doubt, one of the best mobile camps in the Serengeti. Guiding here is superb, food and service are also set very high.
Find out more about all kinds of different Tanzania safari.

kilindi on zanzibar

2009-12-08T12:49:00.000Z

finally we have stayed at Kilindi and it is an amazing hotel on Zanzibar - for a video of Kilindi and full review please see Kilindi review and video

Wildebeest Migration crossing of the mara river - battle at the mara river

2009-11-05T09:00:00.000Z

Amazing video of Wildebeest crossing the Mara river and being attacked by crocodiles. See Battle at the Mara.
For more info about Tanzania safaris click here

Scientist Unlock Secrets behind Serengeti’s Wildebeest Migration

2009-08-03T11:10:00.001Z

"Once salt rises in park's Southern waters, animals migrate north". Something in the water in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park is spurring the world's most spectacular migration, according to a new study.

One of the spectacular and unique event of the year is the Serengeti wildebeest migration, which takes place between the months ofÂ November and July following year. This has been described by many as one of the greatest natural invent in the wildlife worldEach year a legion of nearly two million wildebeest, zebras and gazelles circulate through the park, settling in the verdant grasslands to give birth while the rivers flow and new wet season grasses grow in endless abundance. Then, as if. spooked, the herds suddenly begin to trek north in late May or early June, leaving behind an apparent paradise.

"When animals leave the south, there's still plenty of green forage," Ayron Strauch of Tufts

University said. "And plenty of water."
Strauch and Frances Chew, also of Tufts, now think they know what sparks the exodus: An invisÂ¬ible, rising tide of salts in the rivers from which the herds drink.

Late in the wet season, the plains in the southern part of the park appear healthy and full of nutritious food, but the rain has already begun to slacken. When Strauch and Chew sampled water from the Mbalageti and Seronera Rivers in the region, they found that concentrations of calcium, sodium and potassium salts soared to levels that could be dangerous to the animals' health.

"These nutrients are vital to life on the plains, to be sure," Strauch said. "But as base flow in the rivers decreases, concentrations of these nutrients sky-rocket to hundreds of times what animals might encounter in the plants they eat."

Strauch will present the research next month at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America.

Studies of farm animals have shown that elevated salts in the water supply can cause cardiovascular disease and kidney failure in adults and cripple females' ability to lactate. New-born animals that drink tainted water can suffer from impaired bone and nerve development, and have trouble gaining weight.

"Basically as soon as the water starts turning brackish, you start to see adverse effects," Strauch said.

The same may hold true for Serengeti's wild herds. Strauch and Chew reason that the spike in salt content in the southern waters acts as a signal that it's time to move north, before the harsh dry season sets in and food sources begin dwindling.

However, John Fryxall of the University of Guelph in Canada said declining nutrients in grasses may drive migration, rather than water quality

"These animals need the green flush of nutrients in early growth-stage grasses," he said. Grasses growing late in the wet season are too long and full of woody material that animals can't digest.

In addition, animals also have to compete with humans living nearby for water. Villages surrounding the park are swelling, thanks in part to tourism generated by the famous wildlife. Local inhabitants are increasingly diverting river water for irrigation and drinking.

"There is increasing demand for a finite water resource," Fryxall said. "Future changes in water quality will be important to pay attention to; worsening quality could impose additional mortality on the animals."

What's it like to witness "the Great Migration"?

Observing the animals on the Serengeti plains may bring to mind the decadence of a midnight buffet, the kind you find in Las Vegas or on cruise ships. A bonanza of feasting goes on: The greatest concentration of grazing animals on the planet, including wildebeests, zebras, gazelles and antelope, are there, munching on grass. As they feed, lions, hyenas and other predators feed on them, while vultures swoop in to clear the table, so to speak.

But the thought of all-you-can-eat buffets is likely your last thought of human civilization when you witness the Great Migration Every year, the grazing animals cross hundreds of miles, from the Serengeti in Tanzania to the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya and back again, to eat fresh grass, watered by the rains. Once these animals start moving, you have the sense of something primal.
In short: You're seeing something that's been seen by very few humans before.

The animals' movement starts quickly and without any discernible warning. How do they know it's time to move, you may wonder. While everything looks normal and serene on these grasslands to you, wildebeests can sense a thunderstorm from 30 miles away. They follow the scent to get the best grass.

For people who like to count sheep before going to bed, the migrating animals represent an insomniacs dream it would take almost 35 sleepless days and nights to count one migrating animal per second. The line of animals would stretch back for miles, giving you plenty of time to add up those 3 million animals, the majority of which are wildebeests. Nothing, not massive lines for Black Friday sales or queues for a subway after a down-town sporting event, could prepare you for that many animals moving together at once. The line of animals may stretch back as far as 25 miles.

But your ability to count the running wildebeests and leaping gazelles may be hampered by the beating hooves hitting the ground in the race for fresh grass or the cacophony of grunts and snorts that fill the hot air.

While the grazing animals leave many of their natural predators behind in the Serengeti, the trip, which may cover as many as 1,000 miles, isn't without its dangers. When the wildebeests go leaping and splashing through rivers, you may spot a hungry crocodile emerge from below to snatch them. But the wildebeests will gain in numbers again in the early spring, during foaling season. Many in the group will give birth all at once, and their labour is quick. Look away for just a second and you may miss the foal making its entrance into the world. The tiny wildebeest will get its footing, and then the race for grass is on again.

After all the adventure, the grazing beasts wind up where they started, in the Serengeti, and nature's food chain buffet begins again.For more information about the Migration please see our main site Tanzania Odyssey or our Serengeti Wildebeest migration page, or click here for more information about Tanzania Safaris

Singita’s Sabora Tented Camp

2009-07-07T09:07:00.002Z

Singita’s Sabora Tented Camp in the Grumeti Reserves (Tanzania), has undergone a number of new developments to expand the accommodation offering. This will meet continued high demand by affluent travellers seeking a quintessential ‘Out of Africa’ Serengeti safari experience.

Singita Sabora is one of three distinct, luxurious lodges that form part of the Singita stable of iconic, low-impact, high-end lodges in East-Africa. Located in one of the most pristine wilderness locations on the Western corridor of the Serengeti, it is also the scene of Africa’s thrilling annual wildebeest migration.

Three luxurious, 1920’s-styled tented suites have been added to the six existing elegant tented suites, increasing guest capacity from 12 to 18 guests. Fitted from soft canvas and furnished with theatrical flair, complete with European finery and ethnic artefacts, the new tented suites are air-conditioned and offer all modern luxuries emulating the style of the existing suites. Meticulously designed, each is en-suite with a fully equipped bathroom, boasting newly designed open-air showers, period baths and larger viewing decks with panoramic, uninterrupted views of the Serengeti plains.

A second, spacious tented lounge has also been constructed to ensure that guests have abundant room to relax, recline and enjoy the well-equipped library and other facilities. Adjacent to the existing lounge, it is conveniently independently accessible, furnished with antique mahogany travel chests, Persian rugs and silk curtains reminiscent of a bygone era. With its own wrap-around deck, here sundowners can be sipped while gazing at game ambling by – almost within arms’ reach.

An integrated ‘health and fitness’ facility has been added at Singita Sabora. The new guest gymnasium is designed to provide guests with unobstructed vistas of the African wilderness while training. It is conveniently close to the well-equipped, intimate Spa and heated plunge pool with its ‘walk-in’ stairs. The pool deck has been extended to offer breathtaking views of the glorious sunrise, while providing abundant space to engage in poolside activities, or to enjoy a leisurely poolside brunch or dinner. In addition, an unfenced clay tennis court has been constructed on the western corner of the camp, where guests may engage in this age-old ‘gentleman’s game’ on one of the most comfortable surfaces imaginable.

The mild, temperate climate lends itself to lazy afternoons in the main camp with lavish tented dining room, where gourmet cuisine and exceptional wines can be savoured, or in the adjacent bar lounge, where sunset drinks are a stylish, cherished affair.

Exhilarating outdoor adventures and relaxing leisure pursuits augment the luxurious accommodation and world-class facilities and service offered here. Guests may indulge in superb game viewing or adventurous hot-air ballooning, or simply relax while reclining on a shaded daybed overlooking the plains – the charming ambience of this authentic olde world safari lodge will leave guests hard-pressed to depart.

More About Singita Grumeti Reserves

Singita Grumeti Reserves spans over 340 000 acres of untouched wilderness, offering a quintessential ‘Out of Africa’ experience. It comprises three spectacular lodges: the flagship Singita Sasakwa Lodge, Singita Sabora Tented Camp and Singita Faru Faru Lodge – each with its own unique charm and ambience, and set in a private concession almost the size of Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve.

The Singita Grumeti experience presents a fine, and tangible example of the new African eco-philanthropy that ‘gives back’ through tourism. Offering low-density tourism and a dense concentration of game, thus providing up-close, intimate experiences for guests, Singita Grumeti Reserves embraces the Singita philosophy of ‘touching the earth lightly’. This ethos underscores the approach of low impact and high value tourism, based on the philosophy that a minimal number of guests will have little impact on the land and its fauna and flora, thus benefiting the environment.

In addition to superb game viewing, other activities offered at Singita Grumeti include: archery, tennis, hot-air ballooning, horseback game viewing, a fully equipped spa and gym and a jogging track, as well as community tours to various projects initiated and supported by the Singita Grumeti Community and Wildlife Conservation Fund.

Recognised internationally as providing ‘the best safari experience in Africa’, the Singita product offering further includes six other iconic, low-impact, high-end lodges in three additional destinations: the Kruger National Park and Sabi Sand in South Africa, and in South Eastern Zimbabwe.

Multi-award winner of virtually every hotel and travel award both locally and globally, the focus of Singita is not only game viewing, cuisine, wine, high design and luxury, but also an uncompromising dedication to conservation and sustainability, which includes several significant community projects.

For more info about Tanzania Safari holidays and honeymoons click here

NORTH ISLAND OPENS TODAY

2009-07-01T11:01:00.001Z

NORTH ISLAND OPENS TODAY

After a six-week closure, we are pleased to announce that North Island OPENS TODAY! The intensive upliftment and improvement of the island is complete and ensures that our concept of signature barefoot luxury has been enhanced and improved for all our guests.

We have focused all our attention on the existing facilities and have ensured that the island remains the private sanctuary for which it has become so well known.

Our open, natural and raw approach to architecture with its Robinson Crusoe style, which dictates a significant level of upkeep, has been renovated and touched up on various areas in our existing 11 villas, main piazza, spa, gym, boutique, activities center, library and west beach bar. This includes thatch replacement, wood maintenance, painting of pools, touching up bathroom facilities and an element of soft refurbishing.

To further enhance our North Island wellness experience, we have added techno gym equipment to a completely revamped gym facility and Thai massage decks in each of our spa villas.

To coincide with our opening, we have equipped our helicopter pad with the necessary equipment and safety features that will now allow for night landings of registered helicopters.

With all this complete, as well as much time and effort given to our environmental upliftment, the Noah’s Ark Project, we are thrilled to open the island again – and welcome guests back to our 'home' – where they can once again enjoy the luxury of which we are proud to be a part.

for more info please see North island

Serengeti in June: The Great Migration

2009-06-25T09:41:00.002Z

For all of us at Tanzania Odyssey, June remains one of our favourite times of year in the Serengeti. At this time, the huge migration herds are fairly dispersed across the plains, relishing the glorious green that is now splashed across the landscape. To arrive in Africa after the rains is like setting foot in a strange paradise on earth. This continent, so often characterised by the deep red of its earth and sun-scorched plains, comes alive with new life; its incredible distances seem a vast and fruitful garden, awash with thousands of variations of green.

June is a good time for bird-watching, and sparks a proliferation of butterflies. The air is fresh and clear, with low humidity, and long hours in a Land Rover – necessary if you wish to see the best of this region - are far more appealing. At this time the vast herds of the Great Migration are making their way into the north western plains, soon to face the often fatal challenge of crossing the crocodile infested Grumeti River. The crocodiles here are quite used to waiting for their annual feast! Recently, clients driving out with Nomad Safaris witnessed a 5km long line of wildebeest marching near Musabi, and watched a large pride of lions take down two wildebeest at once.

For safari-goers and all wildlife watchers, each venture into the bush is laden with potential; wildlife is finally lured away from its dependence on the few remaining water sources at the end of the dry season, and anything can happen. The vast distances of the Serengeti are breathtaking in themselves, scattered with rock kopjes and ancient land forms that seem to be the very stuff of creation, but it is truly a breathtaking experience to witness this landscape when the migrating herds are chewing their way to each furthest horizon.

The thousands of unfenced acres of the Serengeti and surrounding parks have been fantastically fought for, to protect a vast and unique ecosystem in this glorious region of East Africa. Here the lives of myriad strange and wonderful wild birds and animals play out; their freedom remains paramount. The ever-changing beauties of the bush may never be qualified or quantified; Man has set this land aside to watch and wonder at the strange composition of Nature’s art, but can never presume or predict what he will see.

Tanzania: Mkomazi Receives Black Rhinos from Czech Republic

2009-06-22T09:45:00.001Z

Article from http://allafrica.com
6 June 2009 - Valentine Marc Nkwame

A pack of three Rhinoceroses from the Czech Republic arrived in Tanzania last weekend and were sent to the Mkomazi Rhino sanctuary in Kilimanjaro region.

The black Rhinos of Diceros Bicornis Michaeli species landed at the Kilimanjaro International Airport from Amsterdam aboard a large customized cargo craft, Boeing 747-400 BCF belonging to the Martinair Airline. They rode in three huge wooden crates.

"The rhino were crate-trained for two months to prepare them for the long flight inside the cages, it required a high level of skilled training to ensure that the animals rode comfortably," stated the retired Brigadier General Hashim Mbita the chairman of the Wildlife Trust Fund.

The animals were taken from the Dvur Kralove zoo, Czech Republic. The Zoo, which specializes in Africa fauna, is reported to be one of the most successful captive-breeding programmes for the Black Rhino in the world. Their rarest animal is the Northern white rhino.

The translocation of the three black 'Michael' Rhinos from Czech Republic cost over US $70,000 this was made possible through a fund-raiser previously done by the Suzuki Rhino Club of Netherlands. Ted and Catrina van Dam who head the Suzuki Rhino club have also been supporting the Mkomazi Rhino project

Two decades ago, Tanzania, with the help of other African Parks, governments, and conservationists, including the George Adamson Wildlife Trust had hatched a protected breeding program to boost the black rhino numbers in parks. They started the Mkomazi Rhino Sanctuary, occupying 43 square miles of the total 2,200 square miles of the new Mkomazi National Park in Same District, Kilimanjaro region. The sanctuary is protected by 24-hours patrol guards and an electrified, alarmed fence.

"At Mkomazi the newly brought Rhinos will be kept under special care and monitoring within the sanctuary before being released into the wild," explained the Director General for the Tanzania National Parks, Mr. Gerald Bigurube, adding that the animals must first learn to adopt to the local environment before being let out.

Which is just as well because, the first rhino refused to leave its crate, upon being let out at Mkomazi and it took a full hour of team effort to persuade the animal to enter the sanctuary.

Tanzania however shouldn't entirely feel like a new planet to the three newly received black rhinos because according to the Director General of TANAPA, the animals were among those taken from East Africa in the early sixties and sent to the Czech's zoo for their safety when their survivals here could not be guaranteed.

Ms Halima Mangi an Ecologist at Mkomazi said the new batch from Czech now brings up the total number of Rhinoceroses at Mkomazi National Park to Nine. "Rhinos had totally disappeared here in the 80s therefore this project, aimed at restoring the species, was started," she said.

The first four rhinos brought from South Africa, two males and two females were introduced to the sanctuary in 1997 with the second batch of four following in 2001. They started to reproduce in 2005 and by 2008 four new babies had been born, however two of these young ones and an older Rhino later died.

The priority at Mkomazi, according to Tony Fitzjohn the Field Director of George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trust, is to increase the founder population to at least 15 rhinos from which a whole new population can be created. Dr Dana Holeckova, the Director of the Dvur Kralove Zoo had previously visited Mkomazi with Dr Hamish Currie of Back to Africa and agreed to donate 3 black rhino of Diceros bicornis michaeli species to its Rhino sanctuary.

Dr Peter Morkel, Berry White and Dvur Kralove rhino keepers played an important role in ensuring smooth and safe translocation of Rhinos while back here Tony Fitzjohn, Elisaria Nnko, Wilfred Ayo, Semu Pallangyo and Philbert Shindano handled all the necessary responsibilities.

Ground transportation was taken care of by Grumeti Reserves, Frankfurt Zoological Society, Save-the-Rhino society and again the Suzuki Rhino Club. Support also came from A & K.

NOTE NEW SUGGESTED TIP RATES FOR KILI CLIMBS

2009-06-18T10:39:00.000Z

New rates for porters and guides for Mt. Kilimanjaro (June 2008)
(published by TANAPA)

Porters: USD 10 per day
Cooks: USD 15 per day
Guides: USD 20 per day

TANAPA fights to improve and maintain Tanzanian Guides

2009-06-18T10:32:00.004Z

TANAPA (Tanzania National Parks Association) is ready to give financial and technical resources to build capacity for the guides in order to attract more visitors to the country, especially to the National Parks, after a three-day meeting organised by the management of the Serengeti National Parks with the Tanzania Tour Guides Association (TTGA), a body which is increasingly gaining importance in the industry.

The aim is to maintain local knowledge and local guides over the influx of foreign guides in Tanzania. Martin Laibooki, Serengeti chief park warden also said cultural attractions would be promoted for tourism within the vast park. These include the historical sites which have been sighted in recent years.

Tour guides at the meeting suggested improving the infrastucture of the Serengeti, so that northern and northwestern parts may be opened up to allow access to "undiscovered" impressive areas that are currently not easily visited due to bad roads.

Expedition Africa treks Tanzania

2009-06-15T13:04:00.006Z

Tanzania is the glorious landscape for a new US reality TV show on the History Channel, retracing New York newspaperman Henry Morton Stanley’s 19th century search for Scottish explorer David Livingstone.

The initial segment of the eight-part series drew a larger-than-average audience last week. An estimated 1.3 million viewers turned to the History Channel last week to watch Expedition Africa, which presents a fabulous view of Tanzania, although was slated for its lack of historical perspective.

In Expedition Africa, Burnett recruits four adventurers to follow the general route taken by Stanley, who set off from Zanzibar in 1869. It took the journalist nearly nine months to locate Livingstone, a famous anti-slavery campaigner who had gone missing after starting a trek in 1865 in search of the source of the Nile.

Stanley found Livingstone in Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, greeting him with the famous words, “Dr Livingstone, I presume.”
The History Channel crew also gathers in Zanzibar for a 1,550km journey, mainly on foot, that they aim to complete in just 30 days. The quartet consists of a female anthropologist and former cheerleader for an American football team; a British thrill-seeker who specialises in televised tests of endurance; a guide who led a blind climber to the summit of Everest; and a former CNN war correspondent.

History Channel publicists suggest that the team will undertake the quest with only compass and maps to guide them. Much is made of the dangers they will supposedly face along the way, beginning with a dhow voyage from Zanzibar to Bagamoyo during which the adventurers are actually splashed by waves.

Burnett also strives to contrive challenges, sending the foursome over the Uluguru Mountains even though Stanley had walked around them. The the intrepid band, is accompanied by a full camera crew, a large contingent of Tanzanian porters and a pair of suitably colourful Maasai warriors - brought along to repel attacks by various predators.

“It’s imperialist nostalgia,” the US newspaper Variety said, “watching four white people hack through the bush with a support staff of natives.” It is reported that “the History Channel sometimes airs respected documentaries, but Expedition Africa has little of interest to say about Stanley, Livingstone or East Africa, neither then nor now.”

The Washington Post warned, “There is little history and even less reality in Expedition Africa. It is neither entertaining nor informing.”
But find some redeeming qualities in Burnett’s version of an African chronicle, including “gorgeous photography, head-spinning production techniques, and deep and abiding love of nature, adventure and the great world at large.” We at will be watching it for that alone! Alternatively, just check out Tanzania Odyssey website and book your own trip!

New Selous Accommodation with Serena Hotels

2009-06-15T12:28:00.002Z

News on the Tanzania safari circuit is that the charismatic Serena Hotel group has taken over the operations and management of two new luxury properties in Tanzania. Both properties, the Mivumo River Lodge and the Selous Wildlife Lodge are located within Africa’s largest game reserve and a proclaimed world heritage site, the Selous Game Reserve in Southern Tanzania.

Set to open on July 15th 2009, the Mivumo River Lodge comprises 12 superior rooms and 3 premium luxury suites decorated in an elegant African style of a bygone era incorporating local materials from the region. Each superior room consists of a luxurious bedroom and lounge with a private balcony offering an indoor bathroom, outdoor shower and an intimate plunge pool. To ensure privacy and exclusivity, the rooms are spread out and strategically located along the mighty Rufiji River, all with magnificent views of the breathtaking Stiegler’s gorge... we look forward to giving you some personal reviews soon!

The lodge also offers full aromatherapy spa treatments, and a variety of activities including game viewing river cruises, exclusive guided walks, bush picnics, private game drives and sundowner river cruises. To complement the Mivumo River Lodge is the Selous Wildlife Lodge, a luxury tented camp unit located on the Eastern bank of the Simbazi River, a tributary of the Rufiji, is set to open on 1st August 2009.

The camp comprises 12 tents, each of which enjoys outstanding views of untouched wilderness, with scatterings of enormous trees and lush, dense vegetation. It has a dining area and guest lounge overlooking the natural watering hole which is also lit in the evenings for night game viewings. The accommodation here is enhanced by a good outside viewing deck and swimming pool. We will update the videoes to each of these as soon as we can take them - keep checking the Tanzania Odyssey video links.

lion vs hyena

2009-05-12T16:10:00.003Z

Tanzania's Serengeti Plains

2009-05-12T14:11:00.002Z

When it comes to national parks, Serengeti is simply the best. So much space. So many animals. The park itself is enormous - at least as big as Holland - its oceans of grass rimmed by immense horizons that make for a heady sense of freedom.The skies are always full of raptors; eagles, vultures, hawks and harriers. But it is the animals that catch the eye - in particular the mass movement of wildebeest and zebras and the presence of the big cats that prey on them. The migration is the greatest wildlife show on earth and it happens every year. But to see it you need to be in the right place at the right time. In the Serengeti even a million wildebeest can vanish in a matter of days, leaving nothing but an emptiness of dust and stubble.Rain is the engine that drives the Serengeti ecosystems, nourishing the grass, replenishing the waterholes. For the wildebeest, life is an endless journey in search of grass and water. Their year begins in the south of the park where the calves are born between January and March. But in May when the rains end, the land dries fast and the herds move on. Away they march, a million strong, pouring into the Western Corridor or heading deeper into the park.Some are taken by the giant crocodiles of the Grumeti River. Others fall prey to the famous Serengeti lions. But by the end of July the survivors have passed through the northern woodlands and crossed into Kenya, where they remain in the Masai Mara reserve, their dry season refuge, until the onset of the rains lures them south again in October.Wherever the action is, the park is well served with comfortable camps and lodges. Ndutu lodge, in the south, is ideally placed for the calving season and game drives among the granite inselbergs of the Gol Kopjes. Kirawira and Grumeti River are luxury camps in the Western Corridor. Serengeti Serena and Sopa lodges lie in the heart of the park, and Kleins Camp and Migration Camp in the north.
Article writen by Brian Jackman

On Safari in Tanzania

2009-05-12T14:04:00.003Z

Africa makes sense of all that ecology-biodiversity-sustainable-habitat stuff that sounds so like the special pleading of socially inept, bearded weirdies when applied to a field in back-garden Britain. Here it has the depth and grace of a religious conviction

The Serengeti: under the lowering anvil nimbus, electric storms stutter on the horizon. The shimmering burnt-orange African sun plummets; a hot wind sways the social weavers’ intricately constructed nests in the whistling thorn. The heavy air vibrates with cooing of doves and the creaking-gate single note of the tropical boubou. High above, a pair of bateleur eagles catching a lazy late thermal precariously balance like their eponymous tightrope walkers. And over the undulating dry surf of grassland the game teems.

It teems and it teems. It teems from left to right and from right to left. It teems up and it teems down and it teems round and round until you are dizzy with teeming. Will this damn teeming never stop? The Serengeti game is divided into two teams: those that eat and those that are eaten. It is one enormous game of kiss- chase with biting. If you only know Africa you know. This is Attenborough country. The gnarly buzzcut acacias, the purple sky, the oily, pustulant sun that slides across the horizon, truncating the evening into 20 minutes of the most exotically beautiful light on earth.

The Serengeti stretches from northern Tanzania across the border into Kenya. This is where the annual migration of wildebeest takes place. Animals following the rains, pulling all the mint-sauce teams behind them. Wildebeest are God’s extras. Individually, they are odd, humpy creatures with long, mournful faces that seem to be continually muttering “Nobody knows the trouble I seen” under their breaths; collectively on the move at a stiff-legged canter, they are one of the great wonders of the world, making the Serengeti Cecil B De Mille Africa. A wildebeest’s only defence against the cruel market forces of a carnivorous world is statistics. There are so many of us, chances are it won’t be me. They even arrange to calve all at the same time in the same place, providing the lions and hyenas with the largest canapé smorgasbord in the world. Wildebeest are nature’s proof that communism works. It’s just not much fun. Their bones litter the plains.

The great grey-green greasy Grumeti river, all set about with fever trees, runs through the heart of the Serengeti. It is home to turgid pods of hippo and crocodile you could land small planes on. Each big enough to make a set of luggage that would comfortably take Joan Collins on a world cruise. Hippos look and sound like the House of Commons. Fat, self-satisfied gents with patronising smirks and fierce pink short-sighted eyes in wrinkled grey suits going “haw-haw” and telling each other dirty jokes. They sit like backbenchers in their soupy tearooms and defecate copiously, lifting their vast buttocks out of the water and spinning their tails like Magimixes. At night you lie awake and listen to them chunter and canvass outside the tent.

The Ngorongoro crater is other place you’ll know if you’ve only been to Africa by armchair. Seven thousand feet up, it is a volcano crater with more microclimates than you can shake a meteorologist at. A perfect soup bowl of game. In fact, Ngorongoro is Africa’s Mount Olympus of game. Purists with breath you could use for snakebite serum of the Outward Bound knit-your-own-bullet school tend to roll their malarial yellow eyes and harrumph like warthog farts at the mention of Ngorongoro, bellowing that it is Disneyland Soho on a Saturday night, St Tropez in July. And they have a point. It is the beaten trail. But then, imagine a life lived never having seen Disneyland or Soho or St Tropez and double it and double it again. The Ngorongoro crater fair takes your breath away. It is a spectacle. It makes The Lion King look like a song and dance. This is the real thing.

You will see a lot of other Toyota safari trucks. But the view at sunrise from Crater Lodge perched on the lip of the Volcano silences all criticism. And visitors too are a part of a safari’s rich ecology. Crater Lodge looks like Portmeirion designed by Danny La Rue and Puccini. A fabulously camp camp, a collection of individual ethnic petit palaces on stilts, where you get your own butler, savanna beds, a log fire and rose petals in your bath. It is the natural home of one of Africa’s most ubiquitous and photographed denizens, the honeymoon couple. I could sit and watch honeymooners for hours. They are endlessly fascinating and rewarding. The main reward being that I will never ever have to be on one of them again. Africa is perfect postnuptial ecosystem. It has danger, nature, adventure and the Tiffany of night skies. All the subliminal triggers for a really good “Me Tarzan, You Jane” sex life. For newlyweds, this is as good as having sex gets. A brief two weeks of libidinous malaria (sweating and shaking). Nothing in the world makes you feel younger, more alive, more fecund and vigorously, expansively free than other people’s honeymoon in Africa.

The problem, and it is a problem with safaris, is that many tourists get to see Africa, experience Africa, fire off enough film to garland an amphitheatre to prove that they’ve done Africa, but never actually set foot in Africa. They set from camp/lodge to converted long-wheelbased Land Rover without ever getting dust on their new Gore-Tex safari boots. Viewed from a truck, it is all as real and special and awe-inducing as most north-world people could ever want.

But looking through a window frame stutters the image into being a sort of stamp-collecting. You go in search of things: the big five (lion, elephant, leopard, rhino and Cape buffalo), a kill, a view. You find yourself asking endless questions like “What’s the gestation period of a Thompson gazelle?” “How far in kilometres will a hyena walk at night?” as if you are swotting for a Third World pub quiz. You record and tick things off in the anecdote album. Getting out and walking is a whole other thing altogether, the snapshots allied into a great rolling panorama. You stop being an invisible, omnipotent observer and take your place as apart of it. Both watcher and watched stalker and stalked. Meet it eye to eye. Danger is a big part of Africa’s turn-on. Travellers love travellers’ tales. The most commonly asked question is “Will it eat me?” And the guides have endless routines of blood-clotting stories. It’s all fun, but it misses the point. In the wildebeest’s statistics of danger, Africa is no more risky than most cities at night. “Will that bus eat me?” “Yes, if you stand in front of it.”

You either get the point of Africa or you don’t. What draws me back year after year is that it’s like seeing the world with the lid off. You can see the works, the intricate engineering, that fantastically complex and beautiful series of cogs and wheels and springs and checks and balances that makes the globe work. Africa makes sense of all that ecology-biodiversity-sustainable-habitat stuff that sounds so like the special pleading of socially inept, bearded weirdies when applied to a field in back-garden Britain. Here it has the depth and grace of a religious conviction.

So if you want to walk, you must, simply must go to the Selous, an area the size of Denmark, the largest untouched reserve in the world, named after the greatest of all white hunters a mythic figure who was the basis for Allan Quartermain. It is a vast area of thorn and cliff and sand and jungle, bisected and filigreed by the Rufiji river that runs through sand and cuts a new course after the rains every year, leaving behind lakes and deep gorges fringed with doum palms. Here is the world’s largest collection of hippo, of crocodile and elephant. It is home to some of the last wild black rhino and the biggest packs of wild dog.

Seen from the Sand Rivers camp on a bluff of sandstone, the river glides through a view that remains perfect and pristine for a decade of million years. You can camp out under mosquito nets on a dry river bed and listen to the great game being played out in the inky shadows, thrown by a moon as bright as a Wembley floodlight. You can count shooting stars around the ironwood fire. You can travel up rapids on little flat-bottomed boats, being chased by bull hippos like furious tugs, and cast for fearsomely aggressive tiger fish while watching for crocodiles, being both fisherman and bait. Or walk quietly and with the pounding heart of a peeping tom to watch elephants bathing. You can be one of the pitifully few people who have ever seen wild dog, the painted wolves of Africa, dappled patchwork resting in the shade of an acacia. Don’t think of any of this as frightening. It’s exciting. And if this all sounds like Mills & Boon travel writing, then I make no apology. I don’t know how to impart enthusiasm other than enthusiastically. But if you imagine it’s all too purple to be true, then fine. Stay at home. Nobody would be happier than me.

For westerners, Africa is a place that happens despite Africans. In all the yearning literature this place has spawned, the only indigenous characters are servants and bearers and extras – and that’s shaming. This is the one continent where travellers rarely say they want to meet the natives. Africans themselves spend precious little time enjoying or worrying about their game. The only giraffe most of them have time to care about is on their banknotes. But Tanzania in particular is a fantastically friendly and interesting human place, lively and complex. To come here and see only wilderness and animals is to see only half the story. In one-street towns there is an entrepreneurial imagination and energy that beggars Silicon Valley.

Stone Town is main town of Zanzibar, the Muslim island that was the centre of the Arab slave trade. Zanzibar is the island of cloves and ivory and it is where Livingstone and the other Victorian explorers began their treks into the mapless nothing. Built out of coral, the winding streets and courtyarded houses feel more North African than sub-Saharan. I sat in the English church that was built on the old slave market with the alter directly above its whipping post and listened to Anglican evensong in Swahili, “The Old Rugged Cross” sung with that unmistakeable mournful, soft sound of African voices.

Mnemba Island, off the coast of Zanzibar, isn’t actually Africa at all. It belongs to that other world of travel-brochure covers. I have never been anywhere that so completely encompasses every dream of the perfect desert island. You can walk round it in 20 minutes. It has just ten huts hidden in jungle. There is a bar and frankly miraculous food served on the beach by candlelight. It is always in the sunny 90s, but the coral-white sand never gets hot. The sea is the colour of Paul Newman’s eyes, and there is a reef within doggy-paddling distance. Nothing in the place stings or bites, and there are more laid-back staff than punters. All you ever wear is a kukoi, a sort of gown-up’s nappy. Indeed you regress into it.

After flopping about three days, I’d unstressed into a five-year-old. I became gurgling, smiley, supine, oily lump of wants and simple desires, moving from sun to shade like a happy, nutbrown maggot. Snorkelling over tropical coral reef is exactly like watching the cartoon channel with the sound turned down. Weightless, intellectually neutral colour and movement. In the other huts the sated honeymooners done Tarzanning in the bush lazily played mummies and daddies. In the eaves, doves’ coos beat the intro over and over. The tune preyed in the back of my memory. What was it? “The Mighty Quinn”? No. “Here We Go round the Mulberry Bush”? No. Finally I got it. It was “Swinging Safari”.

Reproduced from Travel intelligence, Article by AA Gill

Bilila Lodge Kempinski

2009-05-04T12:05:00.004Z

Press release re Bilila Lodge Kempinski - April 2009

Bilila Lodge Kempinski, the most luxurious lodge in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park, has unveiled a special opening offer – stay for three nights, pay for just two – to entice visitors to be among the first to stay in this idyllic new hideaway, which melds beautifully into the unspoilt Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The opening offer is valid from 1st June, the date that the hotel launches, till 30th September 2009, and rates start at 500 Euros for two people sharing per night inclusive of full board, 20% VAT and a 5% service charge.

As an added temptation, Bilila Lodge Kempinski’s sister hotel Zamani Zanzibar Kempinski is offering “seven nights for the price of five” over the same period, so that guests can enjoy the complete Tanzania package: the ultimate safari experience and a luxurious beach holiday on the exotic spice island of Zanzibar.

These two offers can be booked either on their own or together, but there are certain conditions attached, which are detailed below:

- Neither offer can be combined with other promotions of special offers, other than the ones stated here
- The offer is valid on new reservations only, with arrivals during the inclusive period, namely 1 June to 30 September 2009
- The offer is based on the room rate only and does not include extras, such as transfers from and to the airstrip, games drives etc.
- The offer is only valid on request and subject to availability.

With just 74 rooms (including two private villas), Bilila Lodge Kempinski perfectly combines the intimacy of a lodge and the facilities expected of a much larger hotel, such as several different dining options (indoor restaurant, poolside, moonlit barbecues in a traditional boma), an infinity pool overlooking the grasslands and a watering hole where wild animals come to drink, and an Anantara Spa.

Other public areas include a lounge, a bar, a wine cellar, a conference room accommodating up to 80 people, a library, a games room with full-size billiard table, a fitness centre, an art gallery and gift shops. All the guest rooms have luxury ensuite bathrooms, multimedia DVD players, over 50 satellite TV and radio channels, coffee/tea making facilities and a teak deck for relaxing while watching game (personal telescope included); suites have their own private plunge pool.

Due to strict building controls in the National Park, this will be the largest lodge ever built in the Serengeti, but, as expected of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Lodge has been built in keeping with the landscape.

Not only does the arc-shaped building follow the natural contours of the land, but as far as possible only local materials have been used in its construction to ensure that it blends into its surrounds. For example, over a million traditional “chelewa” brooms have been used to create the thatched roof and the stone for the walls was sourced from nearby Mugumu. The interiors also reflect the natural colours of the African landscape, with the work of local artists adding colourful highlights.

Bilila Lodge Kempinski is located in the Central North of the Serengeti National Park, in an untouched part of the Park where the hotel will have its own private game drives. The hotel is a 45-minute drive from the Seronera airstrip, which in turn is a 50-minute flight from Arusha, the nearest international airport, into which KLM currently flies on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Airlines such as SWISS, Emirates, British Airways, South African Airways and Qatar fly into either Nairobi or Dar-es-Salaam, from where connecting flights to Arusha can be picked up.

Game report from Ruaha (Feb 2009)

2009-02-16T17:21:00.004Z

The rains have broken over the Ruaha! What was near desert, over a period of a few days has turned into lush woodland
with scattered green grass meadows. Dry sunny mornings are the norm with massive cloud build up during the day
climaxing in a late afternoon downpour drenching the sun baked earth. The Ruaha has come alive! The trees and bushes
have sprung into action producing leaves and flowers turning the whole park from a dull brown to every shade of green
possible.
Perhaps the most rewarding time to visit a park is during this transitional phase, to see the emergence of creatures rarely
seen in the dry season, and to witness the change in general animal behavior as a sense of relief seems to flood over them.
Suddenly there is food and energy to spare shown by the impala as they pronk and bound around for no apparent reason!
We have also seen the return of most of our migrant birds, some of which come from as far away as the Russian Steppes to
escape the harsh Northern winters, many however come from other areas within Africa. The most noticeable of these are
the cuckoos, several species, which start arriving anytime from October and proceed to wreak havoc among other birds
lives as they fly from nest to nest laying their superbly similar eggs in to the nests of other unsuspecting species ultimately
dooming the family. On hatching, the tiny seemingly helpless cuckoos are anything but. After usually hatching first, the
little cuckoo chick instinctively roll the other eggs out of the nest destroying them below, removing all future competition
concentrating all the adopted parents efforts solely on the one cuckoo. Should the intruder hatch after the hatching of
other chicks he is equip with a hook on the beak tip to dispatch his future rivals.
Several species off bee-eater have also returned to Ruaha, surely the most handsome family of birds in Africa. With such
vibrant colours, the bee-eaters can turn most people into avid bird watchers the minute they sight their first one as they
scythe through the air in search of their insect prey and land on a nearby branch to devour it allowing close approaches.
Dozens of new raptor species are frequently spotted, again some of these birds coming from as far away as Russia to take
advantage of food bonanza the rains bring.
The Amur falcons have returned in their thousands and vast flocks of these birds are often seen over the camp after a
shower of rain to cash in on the emerging termites which escape the mounds in their millions after heavy rain. The huge
spur winged geese and bizarre knob billed ducks although present in Ruaha throughout the year have been joined by
numerous others and are now are in huge numbers littered all over the park and can be seen on every pan and waterhole.
It is it this time of year when Ruaha comes into its own and lives up to its expectations of being one of the greatest bird
paradises in Africa.
Lions are still heard on most nights and are still wandering through the camp once a week or so. Festo located a pride of
15 lion all together resting the day away along the banks of the Ruaha river. Leopard as always is a lucky sighting but we are
expecting an increase as many moved away as the bush started to thin out in the dry season.
One species which will always be present in the Jongomero area is our elephants. With several herds being sighted a day
sometimes in the dry season, we are still getting good numbers of these creatures even now. A female elephant or baby has
not been seen for over a month, but all the boys are now beginning to congregate in to large herds and are often spotted in
our area or more often than not, within the camp itself. The best sighting of last month had to be our resident cranky rogue
bull Kingo return to Jongomero with 20 of his friends in tow. After spending most of the day in the camp and putting on a
great show in front of the main area, Kingo who was very well behaved led them all away again.
The buffalos have moved away from the area but with a bit of effort, herds of up to a few hundred can still be seen in the
open areas further North of Jongomero.
General game as always is still in good supply, most drives come back with frequent sightings of most other species. Giraffe
are still bountiful and one drive returned last week with having seen over a hundred! Greater kudus, probably the most
handsome of all antelope are still being seen almost daily together with Zebras, Waterbuck, Bushbuck, hippos, Dik-Diks,
Duikers, Mongoose, Crocs, Jackals, Bat-Eared Foxes and of course, the ubiquitous Impala whom have just calved and their
tiny youngsters can be seen bounding round all over.
As well as all the big stuff, as always time must be devoted to the no less important smaller little things which scamper
around contributing to Ruaha uniqueness. It has been a long wait for the environmentally vital dung beetles and evidence
for this could be seen by the huge piles of dung covering the park. Within a couple of weeks it has all been cleaned up by
these industrious little workers as they squabble over the fresh dung and fashion it into elegant balls to roll away and
hopefully attract a mate on the way. A horrible job but some one has to do it! Dung beetles return vast quantities of
nutrients back into the soil making them one of Africa’s most important, indispensable little creatures. Velvet mites look as
if they are covered in pure red velvet and if there ever was a visually stunning “bug”, this is it. Never seen in the dry, these
animals are mostly underground where they feed on subterranean termites, as soon as the first rains fall, literally billions
emerge from the soil to mate, in some areas the whole ground can take on an almost red sheen and to walk without
standing on one is almost impossible. They then disappear as quick as they appear and we must wait for this time next year
to see them again. Some extraordinary species of snake have began also to make an appearance, the most notable of course
being the African Rock Python and several youngsters have been found near the camp. Mother has not as yet made an
appearance but a 15 foot Python was spotted by friends of ours in another area of the park!
The elephant shrews are up to their usual tricks and several are seen in the camp each night and on occasion keep up the
odd guest with their constant leg drumming to attract mates. However many of them are now accompanied by a few tiny
babies in tow.
As usual, another good couple of months game wise and without doubt my favorite time of year to be in the African bush.
Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year, and all the best for a good year ahead! Andrew Mollinaro

Pemba, the great escape off Zanzibar

2009-01-31T12:11:00.003Z

reproduced from the Sunday Times 4 January 2009
by Lionel Shriver

The scent of cloves on the breeze, deserted white sand beaches, snorkelling off the coral reef ...

As Sartre would agree, for contemporary travellers hell is other tourists. As my greying, long-haired hotelier in Stone Town despaired, Zanzibar 15 years ago was “a paradise”, yet now mills with sandy, sunburnt Europeans in flip-flops, clutching bottled water.

Kindred riffraff hold up an unwelcome mirror, for other tourists are an embarrassing reminder of what we ourselves look like.

Thus real luxury tourism requires an extra layout of time, effort and dosh to ensure that you do not bring with you half the population of Dulwich. For stalwarts willing to hop three different planes, slump through two charmless layovers in grotty African airports with no AC, board a minivan and then catch a speedboat, paradise is still on offer.

A stomach-churning half-hour plane ride in a 20-seater from Stone Town’s airport, Pemba lies 50 miles northeast of Zanzibar. About half a million, mostly Muslim, Tanzanians inhabit this leafy, lumpy island, which is bursting with gargantuan papaya, jackfruit and mango trees, like the set of Jurassic Park. Locals survive by subsistence farming of cassava and plantains, as well as from harvesting Pemba’s one famous cash crop: cloves.

It was the clove connection that first attracted me. Maybe I betray my weakness for pumpkin pie, but when my companion on this trip first told me about an island permeated by the aroma of cloves, I had to go. Thus when a minivan picked us up at Pemba’s airport in Chake Chake, I strained out of the windows with petulant sniffs.

Yes, the tin-roofed houses of red clay and sticks were picturesque. Women in bright kangas and men on bicycles with baskets of fish were agreeable reminders that I had finally ventured further afield from my London flat than Borough High Street. But where was the perfume of cloves?

At last, as the van drew toward the southern port of Mkoani, mats spread with a spiky brown nubble lined every verge. In town, hilariously, swathes of cloves were spread to dry not only down the road’s meridian, but out on the tarmac, where cars and cycles crunched across the crop.

The van infused with the smell of hot whisky. Pay dirt. That jar of umber nails in my spice cabinet would never seem the same again. If nothing else, when I next mull wine I will wash them first.

The island has a few primitive hotels and diving hostels, but there’s really only one place to stay on Pemba.

Granted, it’s pricey. But even in its low-end hillside huts, £205pp per night includes meals and booze; for that price in New York City, you’d be lucky to get a single bed at the Y and a Nathan’s hot dog. Unless you’re clinging to youthful bohemian pretensions, which I long ago swapped for a hot shower and some assurance that nobody would steal my laptop, after all the bother getting there, you might as well spring for Fundu Lagoon

Fundu’s speedboat dropped us on the jetty. Thatched in coconut palm, tasteful tented accommodations lined a beach of the kind of fine, white sand used in hotel ashtrays, before a sea of such a surreal aqua that it looked Photoshopped.

At first glance, the vista resembled those mendacious panoramas in travel brochures that, in reality, prove upholstered in edge-to-edge beach towels, where vendors hawk bad, melting ice cream, and droves of paunchy fellow nationals in loud swimsuits wish you weren’t here, either.

Yet this lagoon’s coastline is pristinely underpopulated. Even in the height of the summer wedding season, with a mere 18 units, Fundu can grow only so crowded. Sporting three bars, an entertainment room, three lounges, two restaurants and five different places to kick off your shoes in your own encampment, it is one of the last beach resorts on earth where you can get away from other people.

From the first day, I countered sunstroke with sidestroke at sunset and, aside from the odd local fisherman poling a hollowed-log canoe called a mtumbwi, I had, it seemed, the Indian Ocean to myself.

Fundu’s amiable management is well aware that paradise is intrinsically dull, and tries to keep the programme moving. Barbecues on the beach (with a whole red snapper the size of a small whale) and Swahili dinners on the jetty (chopped cassava leaves, seafood in coconut milk) help to keep the tedium of overeating haute cuisine to a minimum.

Numerous diversions undercut the insidious enervation of hedonism. Though Fundu offers diving, including for beginners, the snorkelling on the coral reef off Misali island is sufficiently top-notch to skip the cumbersome gear. A morning’s speedboat plough through pods of spinner dolphins was well spent; these beguilingly undersized dolphins throw themselves into the air and twirl: maritime break dancing. Yet, in truth, the best entertainment at Fundu is a good book.

Two resident Balinese pros provide massages, but be prepared to strip down to ballooning disposable plastic nappies, the most humiliating garment I’ve worn in my life. Facials and body scrubs employ the better part of the pantry — turmeric and yogurt, mango and brown sugar, coffee and Dead Sea salt — all a bridge too far for me, having got over the urge to smear dinner all over my face by the age of three.

Fundu keeps a full-time local staff of 140, giving the resort a much higher than usual help-to-guest ratio: when a step splintered on the pathway, management didn’t leave a sign, but an entire employee. Unless they’re lucky enough to work for the resort, most Wapemba earn about £1.50 a day.

Yet if Fundu’s staff feel justly contemptuous of westerners who lavish £60 on a “banana-leaf body cocoon”, they keep the disdain under wraps. Supporting a school for villagers and planning to build a clinic as well, Fundu gives a huge boost to the island’s economy, and its employees seem to take pride in an operation more than one proclaimed “the best hotel in Africa”.

Far more stimulating than Fundu’s near-desperate provision of amusement is a dander through the mainland. A “spice tour” amounts to little more than a shuffle around an enterprising local’s back garden, but especially for cooks it’s interesting to see vanilla pods dangling on the branch, or cinnamon bark still on the tree.

Likewise, at the market in Chake Chake, the culinarily inclined should be sure to stock up on cardamom, cloves and black peppercorns for back home, all with five times the potency of their desiccated counterparts at your local supermarket.

When I first visited rural Africa in 1972, white people were a novelty. Villagers in the remote Kenyan highlands would reach out to touch my ash-blonde hair with amazement. Yet by the time I lived in Kenya, 20 years later, palefaces were just walking dollar signs, and every stroll collected 25 urchins with their hands out and a dozen hawkers foisting ungainly carved-elephant key chains.

Pemba is different. Folks actually say hello to be friendly, and not because they want your watch. On our stroll through Mkoani, the only local who half-heartedly tried to sell us anything was a vendor with fresh fish. Two white women on their own would have suffered more sexual harassment in Brighton. Wapemba have seen tourists before, but we still elicit bemused curiosity. While most interaction comprised a simple “Jambo! Habari?”, a few locals know enough English to converse.

One jovial gentleman informed us that Wapemba don’t, themselves, use cloves in cooking. The buds are medicinal, regarded as an aphrodisiac — or, as he put it with a wink, “good for home affairs”. But get to Pemba quick, because if the small children screaming down at us from one hillside are any guide (in unison, “GIVE US YOUR MO-O-NEY!”), the upcoming generation will be on the hustle.

Since my friend and I are incurably heterosexual, our last night’s romantic dinner for two on our private beach was sadly wasted: an enormous seafood grill, cosily lit with glowing paraffin lanterns. Within minutes those lanterns had drawn a billow of micro-midges — less like insects than bad weather.

We tried to be appreciative while flapping napkins over the lobster and prising crawling protein from our eyes. Alas, once the lanterns were out, the animate dust storm headed to our tent, readily penetrating the beds’ mosquito net-ting. While a shot of Raid felled the creatures, their raining dead bodies crumbled across the sheets all night.

But that was all right. We were in Africa, and great white hunters still have to bag trophies of some sort.

reproduced from the Sunday Times 4 January 2009

Safari in the Selous

2009-01-18T16:12:00.001Z

In the green floodplain of the Luwego River, three crested francolins strutted to and fro. For a few moments, these birds became the most important things in my life and I watched their every move, breathless with tension.

Beyond the francolins lay the reason why I could hear my own heart pounding. The twitching ears and curved white horns of 30 buffaloes moved among the tall elephant grass. They grazed serenely, unaware of the human beings sneaking up on them.

But if those francolins saw us and sounded the alarm, the game would be up. How the half-ton beasts would then react to our presence was impossible to predict.

It seemed incredible that they had not spotted us. The buffaloes were so close that I could hear them tearing at the grass and pawing the ground.

My nose could even faintly detect their musty stench. If I could smell them, how could they not smell me?

The answer was that Anton Turner, my guide, had expertly kept us downwind of the herd. Minutes earlier, while still a safe distance away from the buffaloes, Anton had given a whispered briefing. “Buffalo have a reputation for being dangerous because of how they behave when they’re wounded. In this situation, 99 per cent of the time, they’ll just run if they see us. But if we are charged, you’re not going to be able to outrun them. Just lie down and keep as flat as you can. Then the buffalo might run around you. And make sure you stay behind my gun.”

Anton was carrying a Remington rifle loaded with six heavy-calibre rounds. It could take every one of those bullets to bring down a buffalo – and the herd was at least 30 strong.

Thankfully, there was no time to think about the manifold possibilities of disaster. Within moments, I was staring at the francolins and rapidly concluding that we were not going to fool them and the buffaloes at the same time.

Sure enough, the birds saw us. With high-pitched cries of alarm, they darted into the air; even the hiss of their beating wings seemed as loud as thunder. I braced for the reaction of the buffaloes, my heart beating faster still. Would they charge us or run away?

Astonishingly, they did neither. Their menacing horns and giant heads, with moist, flaring nostrils, carried on moving in the high grass, only 50 feet or so ahead. Nothing changed. The herd continued grazing sedately.

Anton led us closer still. Walking silently through long grass, I discovered, is impossible. You brush past green blades, stir up dead leaves and crunch on twigs. Each sound we made seemed cacophonous.

We were only about 30 feet away from the nearest buffalo and still they had not seen us. By now, I could make out the full outline of their jet-black bodies with flicking tails. I could see sweat glistening on muscles rippling beneath their hides.

Then, finally, the inevitable happened. A twig cracked and the herd saw us. The buffaloes raised their heads with sudden snorts and jerks of alarm and stared towards us. We stood stock still – and so did they.

This staring match lasted a matter of seconds, but seemed to crawl by like minutes. A few buffaloes edged curiously towards us, their horns held high. Would they charge?

Then, as if reacting to a silent signal, they broke and fled as one. The next few moments passed in a blur of movement and extreme, heart-pounding tension. The buffaloes stampeded away to my left, hooves pounding and nostrils flaring.

Then, as if from nowhere, another unmistakable animal appeared only 50 feet away. Without any warning, a fully grown lioness stood in front of me. She turned and leapt over a small stream, presenting an unforgettable mid-air silhouette of raw power, and then bounded away. In a split second, the lioness disappeared into the undergrowth, while the buffaloes fled across the floodplain.

My next thoughts had all the urgency that fear brings. We had not been the only ones stalking the buffaloes. Unseen by us, the lioness must have been hunting the herd.

If so, she would not have been alone. What about the rest of the pride? Anton soon found the reason for the lioness’s presence. A disembowelled warthog, with its purple intestines bulging onto the ground, lay exactly where the lioness had materialised. She had been guarding a kill. And she had, it seemed, been alone.

This episode taught me more about wildlife – and packed in far more emotional intensity – than any number of previous safaris. The unique exhilaration of tracking big game on foot while in your own expanse of African wilderness is the experience offered by the Selous Project in southern Tanzania.

Anton, a former British Army officer who co-founded the project, takes you on long treks across Selous Game Reserve, searching for elephants, buffaloes and lions. Instead of being driven around in a white Land Rover in the Serengeti or the Maasai Mara, where you are likely to share your pride of lions with a dozen other vehicles, you spend most of your time on foot, enjoying an intense, individual encounter with true wilderness.

Selous Game Reserve is little known outside Tanzania, yet it covers 21,000 square miles – an area bigger than Switzerland – making it the largest wildlife sanctuary in the world. The Selous Project’s concession embraces 300,000 acres of rugged bush along the Luwego and Lukula rivers. Until last year, this was a hunting area. All the neighbouring concessions are still used for this purpose.

But Anton and his partners in Great Plains Conservation, a company specialising in ecotourism, are trying a new model to replace hunting. The idea is for small groups of visitors to stalk big game on foot – and shoot the animals with cameras, not guns. Only eight guests can stay in the concession at any given time. So these safaris are high-value, low-volume and low-impact affairs. In this way, all the advantages of the hunting model are replicated while the crucial downside is removed: no animals are killed.

“We track the animals and get as close to them as we can. The only things we’re not doing are selecting a trophy and pulling the trigger,” explained Anton. These words carry particular authority because he was once a professional hunter. After leaving the Army as a captain, he led hunting expeditions across Tanzania.

But Anton, 37, has resolved never to hunt again. “I never want to shoot another lion,” he said. “I’ve been through the hunting business and, as a form of interaction with the environment, hunting is very pure. But I’m not sure that hunting has delivered the conservation gains it once did.”

The case for hunting rests on two pillars: money and conservation. With clients willing to pay huge sums to shoot big game, hunting provides a powerful incentive for conserving wildlife. But Anton believes this is changing. The rising cost of licences and fees has made Tanzania an expensive destination for those who shoot big game. “Hunting today is a model that is under pressure,” he said. “The government wants more money out of it, so it has raised block fees and trophy fees to the point where Tanzania is becoming uncompetitive compared to elsewhere in Africa.”

And the more the client pays, the more he demands. In theory, strict quotas limit the number of animals each hunting area is allowed to kill. In practice, these rules are impossible to enforce. The authorities will never know how many lions or elephants have been shot in a remote concession.

It is down to hunting companies to play by the rules. But their clients are often determined to shoot whatever species they want. Those from Russia and the Arab world have particularly bad reputations.

If that client wants a lion trophy, he will go home with one, no matter what. If the quota has been used up, this will not prevent an unscrupulous client from shooting the next male lion he sees. And if he comes across a more handsome specimen on a later outing, he will probably shoot that lion as well.

This behaviour destroys the conservation argument for hunting.

Instead, the future of conservation may lie in photographic safaris, where small groups of visitors spend most of their time on foot with minimal impact on the environment. “The acid test of all this is conservation. The big, long-term objective is to make sure this area is still wild in 50 years’ time,” said Anton.

His camp beside the Luwego has only four tents, equipped with twin beds and en suite bathrooms. These have elaborate bucket showers, topped up with hot water at your command. Meals are served in the main tent – which Anton, in true military fashion, called “the mess” – where golden lanterns light up rugs spread across the ground, in the style of an Arab sheikh’s retreat.

On most expeditions, Anton’s chief tracker, Abadiba Karibai, leads the way. If he ever leaves the wilderness, Abadiba could write a book on the secrets of a long and healthy life. At 72, he has been tracking big game since 1961 – and he looks like an exceptionally fit 55-year-old.

When we stalked the buffaloes, Abadiba was at the head of our column carrying a grey sock stuffed with ash. Every now and then he checked the direction of the wind by shaking the sock and releasing a puff of ash. In this way, he kept us downwind of the buffaloes’ nostrils.

Abadiba has survived being charged by lions no fewer than five times. Twice, he was armed only with a bow and arrow – and once he managed to fight off three lions with this flimsy weapon. “I shot one lion with an arrow. Then I had one lion here on my left and one on my right,” Abadiba told me. “They were too close to shoot. So I pushed an arrow into the mouth of one lion. After that, they both ran.”

Despite the reassurance offered by Abadiba and Anton, their expeditions are not for the faint-hearted. Approaching big game on foot will always be risky, and it demands a degree of physical robustness. If a river stands between you and the buffaloes, you simply wade through it, hoping that no crocodiles lurk nearby.

A typical stay in Anton’s Lukula concession will probably involve leaving the main camp for a three-day walk, staying in “fly camps” and marching for three hours at a time through rugged bush, under the intense rays of the African sun.

As Selous Game Reserve is so vast, the animals are widely dispersed. On foot, you cover less ground and, inevitably, see less wildlife, one of the disadvantages of this kind of safari. The lioness beside the herd of buffalo was the only big cat I saw in a week. In the Maasai Mara, you may share your lions with dozens of onlookers, but you will probably see them more.

And all kinds of logistical cock-ups are possible on three-day expeditions. On the first day of our walk the vehicle taking us to the starting point broke down. At nightfall, we had not reached the first fly camp. We could not contact the people at the camp because the radios had failed. A second vehicle that would have taken us to the camp also broke down.

So we ended up sleeping on a canvas tarpaulin spread on the bare earth. A large fire, carefully stoked all night, served as our protection from lions. This was a cock-up, pure and simple. But it also left us sleeping under the stars in the middle of a great wilderness.

As such, it was a perfect African experience.

Seeing the Serengeti on foot

2008-10-19T16:38:00.004Z

I first meet Richard Knocker on a grass airstrip in Ndutu in Tanzania’s Serengeti Plain where my twin prop has to circle low to clear out the giraffes before landing. He has the reputation of being among the best guides on the continent, which is the reason why I’m here. In an era in which the expert is everything – the yoga guru, the cult ski teacher, the personal travel concierge – I am intrigued that the guide may be becoming more important than the lodging, which has mostly dominated the high-end safari scene.

So here I am, on a six-day walking safari with Knocker in and around Loliondo, a 1,500-sq-mile block of wilderness east of Serengeti National Park in a remote pocket of northern Tanzania. Specifically, we spend most of our time in Piyaya, Masai ancestral lands visited by few outsiders and where there are no permanent commercial lodges. We move our camp twice, our light canvas tents and supplies transported separately by jeep. We wander into the landscape with just a guide, scout, and rifle. There’s also no curfew, meaning we can explore by 4x4 at night.

Knocker, I hope, is the man for the job. As soon as I meet him, it’s clear he’s got charisma. Tall and sun-battered, the 45-year-old Knocker reminds me of a better-looking John Cleese. Sometimes shy, he turns out to be witty and well read in politics, fiction, and popular science. Born in Kenya to English parents, he was educated in Britain. He has been guiding for almost 20 years.

Setting out into the bush, Knocker tells me about the gait of the giraffe. Unlike a horse, he explains, it moves its left legs together, then its right, in an almost comical two-step. I’m only half listening, staring at a hyena skulking through the undergrowth. Knocker is smiling. He’s perfectly at ease, bounding here and there as vultures, secretary birds, and Caspian plovers variously swoop in, all of which he points out with an irresistible enthusiasm.

As we walk out on to the plain, I am overwhelmed. At a guess we see more than 100,000 wildebeest in the first 45 minutes. This is the middle of the migration, when the Serengeti’s wildebeest population is passing through. We see lions satiated beside a kill. Hyenas are lazing close by, their heads dripping blood. Yet it’s not the animals that have gripped me, not at first, but the clouds skimming over the plain, their shadows creating a dramatic, menacing sense of pace, belittling everything beneath them. I have never felt more irrelevant.

That first night, we turn in early, tired from the long journey, under a carpet of bright stars. Yet I am unable to sleep. The ground rumbles with hoofed thunder as herds move around us. I hear cats, the screams of prey, and lost calves calling for their mothers. I am exposed. This is raw, immersive stuff and lying in my tent, I discover my torch is dead. It’s still pointing toward the hole where the zippers don’t quite meet. I take a sleeping pill. I’m in the wilderness with a man I just met who tells me that tomorrow we will go on a Moses walk. “You know, like the parting of the seas,” Knocker had said before we went to bed.

I’ve thought about that all night. I still have no idea what he means.

Trust is a fragile relationship. You can see it in the behaviour of the animals. When you approach in a vehicle, they generally don’t run; they haven’t developed fear of a steel cocoon. But approach on foot and even the biggest cats usually flee. Africa’s wildlife has lived alongside herders for thousands of years. The Masai spear lions as proof of valour. Wander onto a plain packed with grazing wildebeests and the animals gently shift to your left and right. It’s what Knocker meant when he referred to the Moses walk, the act of quietly moving through thousands of wildebeests and gazelles. There’s poetry to it — the stares of the heavy-headed wildebeests, the swirls of birds like tumbling schools of fish. It is intense, confounding, and good to do on the first day. It teaches you who you can trust and who trusts you.

That same morning Knocker takes me to the site of a kill near our camp.

It’s still early, before the day’s thermals have carried the vultures high into the sky. There is blood on the acacia where a lion has pulled a wildebeest into the shade, the red mixed with mud from the recent rains. Hyenas, the can-openers whose work is required before lesser predators are able to get their fill, have cracked the bones into splinters. Now a score of vultures is picking over the remains; they eat more meat in this ecosystem than land-based predators, devouring a quarter of their own body weight in minutes. There are vultures with their Elizabethan ruffs and plumped-up feathered thighs and marabou storks, which look like undertakers. Only the brain remains among the bones.

It doesn’t take long to see what Knocker is up to. He is showing me the pecking order in Africa. He is also encouraging me to understand the difference between being vulnerable, which is respectful of the wildlife, and being scared. It is why when we come up close beside an elephant three days in, Knocker stands beside me, speaking quietly, taking care to explain how the animal behaves. I’m grateful he still remembers how it feels to confront fear.

Johnny Lulu, our local scout, is carrying a .458 Winchester Magnum. He stands between me and the animal – a five- or six-ton bull elephant that eats as much as 650lb a day. Lulu is cool, serene. But his grey-green eyes are watching.

Not so long ago, on safari in another part of Tanzania, Lulu came across an elephant that began following the group’s scent. “I had no other choice. When I turned around, it was coming straight for us,” he recounts. “I knew what was happening, my family has hunted elephant for a long time. Flapping ears and a trunk on the ground, that’s a mock charge. But if an elephant comes at you with its ears back and trunk completely rolled, then it means it. And they move fast. So I did what I had to do. It dropped. It was hard, but essential. The other elephants, 12 in all, surrounded it and didn’t move.”

They say elephants mourn. I can believe it. Standing that close to a bull, with its slow and measured blink, does something to your head. “Lions have their own myth,” whispers Knocker, “but elephants up close, it’s something spiritual.” I am beginning to understand better what this is all about: To do this kind of safari, you have to completely trust the expertise of those you’re with.

Total surrender, I suppose. Only then will you start to connect.

As I relax, I begin to understand Knocker’s instinctive empathy for wildlife and the way he gauges an animal’s state of mind as we approach. “We should be privileged observers,” he says. And not just because the animals can be dangerous. They’re letting us into their territory.

I feel this most acutely during the lion walk. We’re lying low on rocky outcrop, a kopje, the mounds of granite that litter the plain and are often topped by fig trees. Opposite, some 50 yards away, is a lioness and her cub. I can see the colour of her eyes and, through binoculars, the pink of the cub’s nose. When we move too suddenly, they begin to pace with suspicion.

Knocker asks us to retire. To disturb their equilibrium is not our right. “What is crucial, what is fundamental to our approach,” he explains, “is lightness in everything we do.”

We walk for hours, Knocker allowing me to experience the bush at close quarters in a way that is simply impossible by vehicle. I hear whistling thorn, so called because the trees sing when the wind blows through small holes in their bulbous growths. I learn about the southern ground hornbill, “a pickaxe with a brain,” says Knocker, which is one of the leopard tortoise’s predators. I handle obsidian, or volcanic glass, used as tools by early bushmen, and I pick up blister beetles with zany exteriors that resemble Ziggy Stardust suits.

From a blue flower I squeeze water that works as eyedrops, and I observe coupled dung beetles rolling tennis balls of muck that they bury and use to feed their young. We spend 20 minutes examining a single milkweed. Watching a monarch butterfly lay her egg, we find a caterpillar on the same plant. “A whole life cycle on a single bush,” Knocker remarks.

This is a man as enthralled by minutiae as he is by the rare sight of a zorilla, the African skunk. He spots one on a night drive. Meanwhile I’m staring at a moving row of eyes, thousands of red pupils reflecting the lights from our Jeep. It’s the wildebeest, moving past like traffic leaving Manhattan on a Friday night. I breathe it in. Remember this, I say to myself: it will be among the most magnificent moments of your life.

By Sophy Roberts - The FT - October 18 2008

Picasa photos

2008-08-28T17:26:00.002Z

New this month - our techies have been creating albums in Google Picasa for most of the Tanzania Lodges. Please see http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/tanzaniaodyssey.com