On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
way2blue
[Another OTR submission of a 10-day trek along the Tsavo & Galana Rivers in southern Kenya.]The Galana River is becoming broader and the landscape drier as we continue east. (I had actually thought we’d be able to swim in the river at the end of the day based on reading The Shadow of Kilimanjaro. Silly… In fact, whenever we started a river crossing at a deep spot, the crew would drop cobbles to chase away any hippos or crocodiles that might be lurking under the surface.)
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Kahiu preparing dinner. We ate wonderful meals, mostly cooked in the steel box as a dutch oven. Bread, cakes, Kenyan specialities… Drinking water came from springs fed (& filtered) by the Yatta Escarpment (260-mile-long lava flow).
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More of the kitchen staff preparing dinner.
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More kitchen.
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Staff tents—‘pup’ tents repurposed from worn-out, larger tents.
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Another hippo hoping for a bite. We did get charged getting out of the river later in the day… Lots of crocodiles at today’s resting spot overlooking the river. Also Egyptian geese with goslings and hadada ibis. Saw mixed herd of zebra, Peters gazelles, oryx, and eland.
I liked to watch the herd animals as we approached to see which ones noticed us first and how they responded. Gazelles for instance tended to bolt as a group whereas giraffes would watch for a while first… Different survival strategies I assumed. Also saw a Silver-Backed Jackal and a hyena.
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We saw several elephants eating the sparse vegetation during the evening drive. The elephants in particular seemed quite stressed. Elephant clusters are matriarchal hierarchies. Nonetheless, mothers with a young calf who can’t keep up in their search for food are left behind. Very difficult.
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Hippos typically leave the river in the evening in search of food along hippo trails that run perpendicular to the river. This guy however was shuffling along the track. They look silly (thanks Disney), but are quite dangerous.
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Campfire. Wine. Samosas… With a bull elephant walking by—just across the river.
eclare
Such interesting photos!
raven
Bush Bunnies!
brantl
You didn’t get a picture of the jackal, we need one as a mascot!
Yutsano
It’s nice that you ran into a member of the Kenyan jackaltariat! Now if only they would stop lurking*…
*this applies to anyone who actually is from Kenya. Or, honestly, Africa in general. The more world perspectives we have on this blog the better I say!
JanieM
The landscape, and being so near the wildlife — these things are almost unimaginable to me. Thanks for taking us on this journey.
way2blue
@brantl: Good point! We rarely paused during the morning hikes so few opportunities to snap photos on the fly. And my ‘camera skills’ leave a lot to be desired…
BigJimSlade
Great photos! When I took a canoe trip down the Zambezi (in the 90s), our “tent” was an enormous tarp, held down by rocks on 2 sides and supported in the middle by canoe paddles – and open at 2 ends. I think we had 6 or 8 people in there. Our water supply was boiled water from the river.
way2blue
@BigJimSlade: Oh! I mignt have already mentioned this, but when one of the other trekkers asked about sleeping outside—but under the vestible—the guide said she had a 50% chance of surviving the night. Definitely focused the mind…
BigJimSlade
@way2blue: Yeah, I just read that in today’s post! If I recall, we always camped on (large) islands to reduce the chance of lions. I know one morning we saw some paw prints not far away and a couple of lions leaving the island (they were maybe 100 yards away and had to just swim across a small streamlet to get back on the mainland).