Category: Sabbatical

Boy what a full and emotional day we have had. We had lunch with Shivani and warriors at her camp today, spent some time visiting and working out some things we will do for them in the US & of course talking about our next trip! I must admit I got a bit emotional saying good-bye.

We left there for a long 5 hour final game drive. And on our last day we saw a mammal we have never seen (we did not see one two years ago) — a greater kudu.

At the end of our game drive our guide Jelly

…. surprised us by taking us up to one of our lunch spots for a sundowner (we had drinks as we watched the sun go down )

Jelly has been a fabulous guide and so good to us.

When we got back to camp Jelly told us to wait for Benjamin ( the manager). Benjamin asked us to come with him & he led us a bit down the road in the dark. He led us to a spot where there was a fire…

… two chefs cooking & our waiter…

& a table set up just for us!

We had a lovely dinner. Then when we thought dinner was done a group of folks came over singing with a cake! The cake says, “Goodbye. Come back soon.”

They made us feel really special.

Samburu has worked its way into our hearts. We love it here. We are so glad we got to spend time here with Ewaso Lions. We are grateful for Shivani’s friendship & so glad she is part of our lives.

We fly in the morning to the Maasai Mara in Southern Kenya. There are a lot of lions there and the great migration of millions of zebras and wildebeest has begun.

We will not have wifi where we are going. However the blog will continue to be written and will be posted when we can.

Sunrise this morning…..

Our last full day in Samburu….😩

Once again we found lion tracks, this time of Lgruet, the only adult male lion here.

It’s fun following tracks to try to find a lion. They are very cooperative and, unlike cheetahs and leopards, use the road to travel. I guess if they are not hunting they don’t care who sees them. Nothing will attack them. And we continue to be amazed at how far they travel in a night. Alas, we did not find Lgruet.

We found elephants.

We watched two black-backed jackals finishing eating a kill of a baby gerenuk. The poor mother was standing at a distance watching. 😰

Then we had a very exciting event! A young male leopard on the hunt.

He found a dik-dik. We had a perfect view. The leopard hid. The dik-dik had no idea the leopard was there and walked TOWARD him. The leopard began to move in.

And then ……a safari vehicle zoomed up, scared the dik-dik and the hunt was over.

Animals here in Samburu are nervous at round vehicles. That is not the case in the Mara where we head tomorrow. There are many more people there and the animals tend to ignore them.

We are off to have lunch with Shivani and her warriors. Then we have to say good-bye to our friends. 😿

Update to July 9 morning post:

I mentioned a dik-dik  outside our tent. Here are some pictures of a dim-dik.

Here also are pictures of us giving goats to the marathon winners.

Lion tracking in Samburu: we went across the river to Buffalo Springs to look for lions. We found tracks where they had gone to the river to drink.

Then we were faced with many places for lions to hide.

Alas, we did not find them. Lion tracking is very difficult here–much more difficult than in the Mara where we are headed next.

We did come across a river crossing of a family of elephants. A young one came up to the car & trumpeted–obviously not liking our presence. We saw 2 boys fighting. Enjoy these pictures .

We camped out in the bush!! We got to Shivani’s in the afternoon. She has a permanent camp on a hill. If you look on the hill in this photo closely you can see some rooftops. That is the camp for Ewaso Lions.

She had a conference call soon after we got there. There are plans to build a dam in Samburu. This would result in drying up the river and would be devastating for wildlife.  So Samson, one of warriors, took us to the deck to look at the view and watch the sunset.

After dinner it was early to bed. Here is our tent at Ewaso Lions and our toilet.

It is very dark there at night. I heard a dik-dik by the tent in the middle of the night. It is the smallest antelope –about the size of a small Italian greyhound.

We were up at 4:45 for the Lion Marathon. We were dropped in the dark in the middle of the bush with Samson who of course had no weapon.

We walked around and waited for the runners.

About an hour later they came through.

Even Shivani ran.

After the race the warden of the conservancy picked us up and drove us-with a very cracked windshield to the finish line.

Goats were given to the top three finishers-to be added to their herd. We each got to give a goat to one of the winners!

The Samburu people are so kind and friendly to us. We were the only non-Samburu there. Folks came over and greeted us and shook our hand. The Samburu are a gentle, calm people and have been so gracious and welcoming to us. We met one of the Ewaso Lions’ warrior’s family. We have interacted with the Samburu here in a way people who just come in safari are not able to. We feel very grateful for this experience. I am sad our time here is drawing to a close.

The next post will be after we return tomorrow, but before we head out to the bush we wanted to show you what our home in a safari camp is like.

This is what we have to do to keep the monkeys out.

Here is our view and the electric fence. (We hate the fence. Our next camp does not have one.)

We went out this morning to track lions. We found tracks of Nanai, Nabulu, and the two Cubs we watched yesterday.

We followed them and determined they had gone up in the hills.

Next we went across the river to find the lions we saw yesterday. We found tracks of the two mothers and the two 1 1/2 year old Cubs. Here is a photo of the track of one of the Cubs.

We determined they had crossed the river and later we determined they had gone up into the hills also. We spent a long time trying to find the tiny 3 month old cub we saw yesterday but were unsuccessful.

I feel like I’m part of Ewaso Lions with all of this lion tracking! It’s difficult work. I have been amazed at the great distances the lions travel overnight. Then during the day they hide in the shade. There are so many places to hide here. It is not flat and open like the Mara so it’s difficult to find them.

There are a lot of elephants here and again we had close encounters!

This photo is taken through our car window.

Finally we saw cheetahs!! Cheetahs are very endangered. But. we saw a mom and 3 6-month old Cubs!  We watched them sleep for a while. Then mom went off to hunt with the 3 Cubs trailing behind!

We have a break for a few hours now. We are going to shop and get ready for our next stupendous adventure !  We are leaving this afternoon for Shivani’s camp– about an hour away– and we are spending the night!  We are camping in a tent in the bush! No running water…no flush toilet…and no fence! I have never been camping in my life! We will have dinner with them, enjoy the evening, sleep in a tent and then help in the morning with the annual lion marathon. What a unique experience we will have! A night in the bush!

Had the most amazing lion day! I am thrilled beyond belief!

First Shivani set me straight on some names. The 5 month old Cubs we have been watching belong to Nanai. Her sister Nabulu is with her. We did not see either of them two years ago.

At 10 we went across the river with Shivani to look for the male lion. Instead we found Nadala ( we really found her–we did see her two years ago). She was with her two 1 1/2 year old Cubs. While we were watching a tiny 2-3 month old cub stuck it’s head out. Shivani did not know the cub existed and does not know who the mother is. Before we could look for mom or more Cubs a car came up close. Not all folks keep a respectful distance from the animals and Shivani moved to draw them away. We went a short distance, looked across the river and found both lionesses from the morning resting on the riverbank. Then we went bank to find the 3-month old but the lions had been spooked and had moved. So we went to watch the ones across the river on the bank. Nabulu got in position to hunt an impala that had come down to drink at the river. She crouched , then crawled….and the impala saw her so the hunt was off.  But we knew where Nabulu and Nanai were hanging out.

We ate another bush lunch with Shivani and the Warriors.

Here is Yeselei, a Samburu warrior who has visited us in DC.

Here was our view today.

This afternoon’s game drive was all lions! First we went on our side of the river to where Nanai, the Cubs’ mother, was resting on the bank.

Another car came up so I started taking pictures of the elephants behind me and it worked. The folks in the car took pictures of the elephants and moved on. We left Nanai then so no one would find her. She was sleeping so peacefully we wanted to keep it that way.

Then we went to where Nabulu was. She had the Cubs with her. I spent TWO hours with the Cubs. It was awesome!

They were at the base of an acacia tree and a leopard had climbed to the very tip top of that leafy tree to get away from the lions. (BTW I’ve seen a leopard 5 days in a row). That kind of tree is not a normal hangout for a leopard and he was sitting up watching the lions. The Cubs are the remnants of the leopard’s kill and started to climb the tree which made me very nervous.

I just stayed for hours watching. Mom came over. The Cubs played.  Finally they all started moving. We followed them and the whole family climbed deadfall. (

We continued to follow them to determine where they were headed. We were the only car to do this. They came close to our car.

Current lion count:
Lioness: 4
Subadult: 3
Cubs: 5
Total: 12

This morning we watched a giraffe eating.

I’ve decided they are really neat animals.

Then we started tracking lions. We found the tracks of the lionesses and Cubs that we saw yesterday. Here are the tracks of a cub:

We followed the tracks. We searched In bushes…

and bushes…

and tall grass that is the same color of a lion.

We were down by the river and saw the oldest lioness here, Nashepai, walking on the bank on the opposite side. She has no teeth and she looked great!

We gave up looking for the Cubs and we found them!!!

They are so cute! They were apart from their mom and started calling for her. She came and got them and off they went!!

Now we are going off with Shivani to look again for the young male they want to collar.

Shivani picked us up at 10:00 and we headed to Buffalo Spring Reserve across the river south of us. We had never been to that reserve. When we were here two years ago the bridge across the river was out. We searched 4 hours for a 3-year old male lion they want to collar. We never found him. It showed us just how difficult their job is. There are a gazillion bushes lions can hide under in the heat of the day. We are going back to look for him tomorrow.

We did find a lioness’ tracks. Shivani thinks they were of the oldest lioness in Samburu, who has no teeth. The tracks led us to a field of bushes. We didn’t find her. We could have gone right by her.

We did see a Somali ostrich, the same elephant family we had seen the day before across the river, waterbuck, zebra, gazelle and Impala. There is quite a bit of flat grassland in Buffalo Springs, unlike in Samburu, and so we saw large herds of Beisa Oryx, only found here in Samburu. We also found hippo tracks–seems there is one hippo in Samburu.

We had another picnic lunch in the bush with Shivani and 3 Samburu Warriors.

This is one of our favorite things to do. Here are two warriors fixing lunch.

They don’t bring sandwiches but Bunsen burners to heat vegetables and to make tea. We get a box lunch from the lodge ( it’s been chicken every day) but we all share our food with one another.  Here is our view.

After lunch we found two separate herds of cows in the reserve. Domestic animals are not allowed in the reserve. Yeselai (one of  the warrior who came to DC in May) went to talk to each herder to tell him to move his herd. They also reported it to the Rangers. It was interesting to watch them do that part of their work.

Finally here are some shots of the monkeys at our lodge.

We followed fresh lion tracks.

They were the tracks of the 3 lions we saw 2 days ago but they went over a hill where there was no road so we missed them.

BUT the best part, we found a lioness, Nabu, her two 5 month old cubs, and her sister Nadala. Nadala was the first lion we saw two years ago and Nabu was the second.  It was great to see them again. The Cubs were adorable. They played. Nadala and Nabu played. Then Nadala set out on a hunt with Nabu and the Cubs following. The Cubs stopped to tackle one another and wrestle along the way. An oryx was there and a warthog. We thought they were hunting the warthog but for some reason they didn’t.

We are spending the rest of the day with Shivani going to a new area. She is looking for a particular lion in order to collar him.

Current lion count:7
Lioness:2
Subadult:3
Cubs:2