We were only on the safari in Nairobi for a few hours, but as I go over my 400++ photos, it feels like a lifetime of memory and experience. It’s a challenge to sum up what I saw and how I felt, and I can only hope with some blurry photos and a flurry of words I can share what it was like.

Get comfortable. This is going to take more than a few blog posts.

First of all, as we were making preparations for this safari, I told my colleagues, I absolutely need to see giraffes. This is my comms priority, I joked. I told them, you can have the lions and rhinos and hippos, but when we see the giraffes, you all need to get out of my way because I promised my son ten million photos.

I am happy to say that I completed this objective, and then some! But I get ahead of myself.

Dawn at the park

It was cold and damp when we got to Nairobi National Park, and we were grateful for the layers we wore. We stood in the open vans as we drivers took us down winding roads from the main gate into the park. The ground was covered in brown soil that came up in clouds of dust behind each van, and soon we were all covered in it, from our hats and our hair to our jackets and sleeves.

I was in awe as I saw the tall trees give way to vast plains stretching out before us, dotted by trees here and there, ponds hiding between hills and roads. In the distance we saw other vehicles, filled no doubt with other tourists desperate for a glimpse of the wildlife. We saw fancier, flashier vehicles: Land Rovers, pickups, newer vans. We saw wildlife photographers with giant lenses on their cameras.

Our driver explained that the park was huge, 117 square kilometers, and home to over 100 mammal species, including four of what they call the Big Five: lion, buffalo, leopard and rhino (the last is the elephant, which is not found in this park). I was disappointed when I learned that giraffes were not part of the Big Five, but apparently the term was originally “coined by big-game hunters to refer to the five most difficult animals in Africa to hunt on foot” (Wikipedia), so I guess it makes sense that giraffes do not make the cut! The driver did promise that there were giraffes in the park.

The driver explained that all the drivers of all the vehicles kept in touch by radio, informing each other when and where certain animals would be spotted. True enough, we heard the radio crackling every so often, and the driver would speed up, swerving here and there. Soon we would be joined on the dirt roads by other safari vehicles, and it felt like a race to see who could get there first, whether it was rhinos or lions.

Fowl language!

The first animals we saw were actually cute guinea fowl (above). There were dozens of them all over the first clearing we found, where there was also an elephant memorial (below).

Regretfully, most of my photos are not super clear as I was using my phone, and there was only so much zoom could do.

Hanging out–on a rhino

I don’t know much about birds, but it was interesting to see the different ways they flew and behaved. I saw many that swooped up and down, gliding for a few minutes before repeating the same motions. We saw the birds that parked themselves on the backs on rhinoceros, and the ones that lingered around ponds with crocodiles, while others perched on tall grasses nearby.

We saw Egyptian geese (below, left) hanging out at a pond with hippopotamus, and Blacksmith lapwing (below, right) lingering on the nearby road too.

Camel-Chicken!

One of the most entertaining was the ostrich. We learned that, as with many animals, the male was the more colorful one, with black and white feathers and a pink neck, while the female was mostly brown all over. It was funny to see it move its long neck down as it pecked at something on the ground, then up again to look around.

One of the funniest things I learned was from my colleague Sitara. She explained that in Pakistan, their word for ostrich was “shutar murgh (شتر مرغ)” which literally means camel (shutar) and chicken (murgh), and I swear it is the most appropriate description of this funny animal.

There were many other birds, too many and too far for photos. I wish I knew what they were called, but here is a list of the birds found at Nairobi National Park. Apparently there are safari tours that are centered around Kenyan birds, so I’m sure that’s a great treat for ornithologists and bird-watchers!

For the more casual wildlife tourist though (me), there are other more interesting sights, and I’ll get around to those in another post!