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.
swiftfox
We stayed in two camps in the Serengeti, one in the central section and one closer to the Mara River.
The topi have a unique dark bluish color above the legs.
Yet another sleeping lion.
There were around 30 Land Rovers positioning themselves for the lion. When we were done with the lion we turned to our right to get photos of this lilac-breasted roller. One of the safari guides drove up to our guide and started yelling at him in Swahili: “The lion is over here and you are taking pictures of a bird!”
The serval was my favorite. There was one escapee from North Carolina that wandered past a security camera at Monocacy Battlefield four years ago. Nice to see one in its native land. We saw three during the trip.
Who do you think gets more out of their symbiotic relationship, the oxpecker or the giraffe?
We had two leopard events; a mother/daughter resting in a tree that was 100 meters away in the forest, and this one in a tree with its hartebeest carcass (NSFW).
This lion shows expresses our condition at the end of the day; 10-11 hours in the field (lunch provided); hot and tired. Most of us were done by 9 pm. Breakfast and dinners were made from scratch at the camps. Dinners were excellent, especially the soups.
Each tent had a firm, nearly king-sized bed. The showers were 5-gallon buckets of hot water activated by pulling down on the makeshift handle; we were told to pre-rinse quickly; turn the water off; soap up and rinse again. Three of the camps had indoor toilets; the last camp had portable chem toilets which were bad news as far as I’m concerned.
Coming Up: Mara River and Hot Air Balloon
Baud
In the
junglegrassland, the mightyjunglegrasslandThe lion sleeps
tonighttodayMagdaInBlack
@Baud: gd it. I did not need that earworm this morning!
KSinMA
Great photos. Thanks for sharing!
eclare
These photos bring back so many memories of my trip to Kenya in 1997. I absolutely loved it, thank you!
Absolutely gorgeous bird.
Betty
You were right about the bird. You’ve seen one lion, …
MCat
Thank you! Great photos.
lashonharangue
Thank you. Wonderful photos!
MelissaM
I thought the first shot of the topi was kinda out of focus. Then I looked again! Ha! And yeah, I’d take lots of pictures of that roller. So lovely!
BigJimSlade
Excellent!
Steve Crickmore
’30 Land Rovers positioned to see the sleeping lion’. I have been on the Massa Mara with about 300 vans and Land Rovers to see the crossing of the Wildbeest on the Kenya side of the Mara River in August. Sometimes, it can feel like you are at a drive-in movie. But you can have many quieter moments in that Park and there are many such National Parks in East Africa that don’t feel as if they are car parks. Tsavo East National Park, the size of Wales, in Kenya and less visited, as Watergirl has shown photos of before is one, where the unspoilt wide landscape is as much an attraction as the wild animals.
way2blue
The serval is a very cool cat. Wished I’d seen one when I was in Kenya. Thanks for sharing your travel adventure. (I was lucky in that when we visited Maasai Mara in 2021, tourism was just opening up again and there were maybe half as many visitors as usual.)