It was an extremely exciting day as I was living my dream of visiting Africa safari. The very idea of experiencing the National Geographic and Discovery channels live was exciting to the core.
The first day was the safari and game drive in the Tarangire National Park, located 120 km southwest of the city of Arusha. It took us 3 hours to get to the park where the last 5 km were roadless, probably getting the visitors used to the fact that there were no roads inside the park. The guide did all the documentation work for us to enter the park facilities.
On the way we had passed the Arusha airport which seemed more like a private airport due to its size and proximity to the road with collapsible vehicles. We also pass through a large open expanse of grassland and the occasional tree. It was drizzling a bit saturating the ambient colors. The road had many steep ups and downs, but the powerful safari vehicles had no problem navigating these terrain. Arriving inside the park, our guide gave us simple instructions:
- Do not feed the animals
- not the garbage
- Do not get out of the vehicle at any time as walking is not allowed
At all times within the park one has to stay in the safari vehicle. We arrived at the park at 10am with packed lunches. It is a regular way to go out on safari with picnic lunches to ensure that the whole day is spent on game drives without returning to the lodges/camps for meals. The driver and guide is a trained staff who must take care of several things besides driving and spotting animals.
Some of the details of the national park that he shared were:
- Tarangire is the national park gazette number 197.
- It is in an area of 2580 square kilometers.
- The park derives its name from the Tarangire River that flows within.
- The word Tarangire means wild boar river due to the large population of wild boars in this park.
Each national park has something unique, baobab trees and tusked elephants for Tarangire. The tusks of these elephants are huge and their population numbers are also huge within this park.
Once instructions and information were shared and it was rarer to go inside, the guide opened the full roof for the best possible viewing. The windows are big enough to see out, but can sometimes limit the view of the landscape. Once the roof was up it was just beautiful with large open meadows and eyes out for wildlife sightings. Driving another 500 meters and we were officially within the limits of the Tarangire National Park. There were only mud roads, but the ride still didn’t feel bumpy. The first thing we saw was a termite mound. Termites and other ants are an extremely important part of the ecosystem and the best cleaners on planet earth. They travel in armies and make sure that after a slaughter nothing is left to age or pollute the environment.
There were open grasslands along with trees that also included the unique Baobab tree. It is a hollow tree with a wide trunk with small branches and few leaves. It is also jokingly referred to as if the tree was planted upside down with its roots visible instead of the actual branches. This tree has natural holes inside its trunk for poachers to hide in and animals to rest in. The first animal visible was a giraffe grazing silently on a yellow-barked acacia, which is an extremely long thorny tree and also a favorite of giraffes. The tongue is twisted in one direction to avoid punctures from the tree, and is then swallowed by the animal. The female giraffe can be identified by having visible hair on the horn on her head. The male species have no hair exposing the bare horns.
We were driving and sighted bucks in the Tarangire River. They were small in number with multiple groups and enjoyed the water around them. We could see 2 of them testing the strength of their horns. The open roof provides a good wide-angle view of the park and game landscape. There were some ostriches also appear on the side of the road grazing on the grass. The males are black while the females are grey. It was very interesting to learn all these random minute details from our guide about different species.
We seemed to be the only ones driving, but we saw another safari vehicle stopped at a bend in the road. This is generally an indication of a sighting or expected wildlife activity. Our vehicle got closer and saw a giant tusk near a baobab tree. It started moving and the vehicles closed in on it to see the great fangs. I have also seen Asian elephants and could easily tell the difference from their African counterpart with bigger ears and bigger tusks. He was playing with a tree and relieving the itch on his body. It seemed to have had a mud bath with red earth glistening all over its large body. We stayed there for some time photographing the animal from different angles and observing its activities. After a few moments, he went into the trees and all of us lose sight.
The next animal to be seen was the gazelle, which was also along the road grazing fresh grass after the monsoon season. They are hunted by carnivores in abundance. It is a deer-like animal with shiny golden silky fur and a black stripe to distinguish between a female and a male. One of them jumped out and would have easily been a few feet away.
Maneuvering further into the park we saw a family of warthogs crossing the road with the young fully shielded from us. Herbivorous animals with false fangs intended only for defense. These animals are found in abundance here and give their name to the river and to this national park. They have to kneel down to feed on the grass because of their long legs.
We continue to drive around the playground and arrive at the picnic site. Each park has a dedicated secure picnic site where visitors can use sparkling clean restroom facilities, seating arrangement for packed lunches. We get out of the vehicle and walk around to feel the surroundings with lunch being the last priority. We decided to skip lunch at this point and explored the area that looked like a hilltop region overlooking the river and a larger landscape in front of us. There were many superb starlings at that site and they seemed extremely friendly. I was trying to shoot one at range and realized another had literally climbed on my shoe and another on my back. It was very nice to see myself surrounded by birds of such beautiful colors and to feel close to nature.
After a 20-minute stop, we got back in the vehicle to continue the action. As we descended we saw many rock hyraxes. I was seeing and hearing these for the first time and their appearance suggests that they are larger versions of the mouse. They have another species of tree hyrax that is found only in trees. We could see a whole community and several families leaning on rocks. They were quick to scale rocks and hide within them.
The guide now started driving towards the exit of the park (same as the entrance) as we had planned to cover Manyara national park on the same day as well. On the way back we saw a martial eagle with its yellow eyes and a small crest on its head perched on one of the branches of a leafless tree. You could tell the arrogance with which he was sitting on top, giving him an excellent position to observe the park. Up ahead in a tree we saw Griffon Vultures, which can be seen in abundance during a hunt. They are also cleaners of the environment with their gathering abilities. The beaks of these two birds are pointed and needle-like to tear through any flesh attached to the bones. The martial eagle is also responsible for opening the corpse.
On some trees we noticed a tied blue cloth used to collect or kill the Tse Tse fly, whose bite can cause sleeping sickness. These flies look like large houseflies and attack both humans and animals. It was again very interesting to listen to all this unique information and to get a closer understanding of the mother nature that we don’t even pay attention to, leading our hectic life in the city.
We had now arrived at the park entry/exit checkpoint to deliver the final exit documentation documents. Probably 5km later we stopped at a local Maasai market area to have our packed lunches. Lunch was full of red meat and I had to survive only on fruits which were also thankfully packed. It had started to rain at that time and we were experiencing all weathers in one day. The place was a small hut with chairs made of goatskin. I was surprised to see the full goatskin with hair still attached and curiously used as a cushion to sit on the chair. During our meal, many local people came to sell locally handmade beaded garlands and other handicraft items. We skip shopping and start our journey to Manyara National Park.
At all times I felt very comfortable with the beanbags that we had customized for our safaris. I had searched and read a lot on the web to find the one with the right design and shape. I was quite happy with the results and even happier when the use seemed perfect on those vehicles.
Photos of this national park can be found here.
