I am sitting at my desk overlooking our garden, the rains have just started and the land is turning green. The rivers are full, the acacias are in leaf and in bloom, and outside my window weaverbirds in breeding plumage shoot past like streaks of vivid beaten gold. It is good to be home after an incredible safari season, a chance to reflect on all the special moments we have shared with our guests.

We have had so many great safaris its hard to know where to start. Each one has had its own set of adventures and stories. We have had guests from across the globe some traveling with friends, others with family. As always, safaris bring out the best in people and break down the barriers between generations — our guests have spanned the ages from five to 80 this year! It is always such fun to introduce children to the thrill of safari, but for all of us a safari has the magical ability to allow us to let go of the stress of life, to become young at heart, as immersed, innocent, curious and fascinated as we once were as children.

Shaba National Reserve in northern Kenya has been one of my favorite wild places since I was a child; it’s a magical place that has cast its spell on Lara and the children too. There are corners of it that are still utterly pristine. This year we have been camping at a spring called Funan; the tents are built in a grove of ancient huge acacia trees overlooking the trickling spring waters. The game is getting tamer and during the dry season animals come in from the surrounding areas to drink the crystal-clear water. We have had game come past and sometimes in between the tents. Elephants visit camp frequently; the females and babies come in the middle of the day, sometimes drinking right by the mess tent. In the evenings, we have watched quietly from the verandahs of our tents as big males have come in groups of two or three. It is magical to sit in silence watching and listening, close enough to see every wrinkle and hear the water gush down their throats.

Herds of buffalo a hundred strong have also come through and raised our pulse rates. One of the world’s finest experiences is to lie in your bed, safe and sound in your tent, listening to the primeval sound of a lion roaring in the moonlight as he walks closer and closer to and eventually through your camp. One of our guests complained bitterly about a particular male lion, not because of his roaring, but because of how rank he smelt as he brushed past the tent.

We have had some fantastic walking in Shaba too. One of the more unusual walks we do is into an ancient volcanic crater, just outside the reserve. Standing on the lip of the Magado Crater you are greeted by the curious sight of a small green lake surrounded by wells and springs. The lake is alkaline and the salt is still mined today, probably by the same method as it has been for thousands of years. The chloride-rich water is drained from the lake into smaller evaporation pans. Once the water has evaporated from these pans, leaving the layer of salt on the bottom of, the pan is flooded again and the process repeated until a cake has built up, which is then harvested and traded.

We first visited this crater with Lara’s grandmother, Mary Leakey, many years ago. Prior to her visit to Magado she had unearthed a strange series of depressions several thousand years old that she suspected were related to an ancient form of salt mining. She was so excited to see what she believed was a present-day illustration of the depressions she had found near Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.

The path into the crater has steep sides, worn down by people and cattle for thousands of years. It is an eye-opening experience to see the salt harvested from the lake and cattle watered from the wells. The environment at the bottom of the crater is very harsh; the salt miners eke out an existence against great adversity. When with these people it always strikes me how far the developed world has been separated from the most basic issues of survival.

Sarara Camp on Namunyak is another of our favorite places. The land is wild and rugged, and throughout the dry season the Samburu bring their cattle in to drink at wells dug deep into the dry sand riverbeds. This custom has changed little over time. The troughs are filled by transferring buckets along a human chain of three or four people who stand one above another on small platforms dug into the side of the well wall. The well is about 15 to 20 feet deep. To keep up a rhythm, the herders chant and sing, while the sound of the falling buckets and the splash of the water filling the trough act as percussion. The songs are usually in honor of the cattle, often sung to the brave bull that leads the herd. One of the most interesting things to watch is the cattle, which are very patient, despite not having had a drink for days. Desperately thirsty, they wait quietly to be called to the troughs. The relationship between man and beast is incredible.

One of the most exciting things this year has been to witness the return of the wild dog population in Kenya. It has been over 20 years since we last got to watch them. The most exciting time is the evening, when they begin to stir for their hunt. Their rousing is ritualistic, with individuals getting up and stretching and starting to whine and yip. They rub against each other and little by little the whole pack is wound up and ready to go. As hunters they are ruthless, effortlessly covering huge distances over any type of terrain. It can be an alarming car ride trying to keep up with them.

In August we stayed at the premier 350,000-acre Grumeti Reserves in Tanzania. The reserve can accommodate only 54 guests in two lodges and a tented camp. We stayed at Sasakwa – the reserves finest property. The lodge is sumptuous; each “room” is a mini-villa with a view over a private Serengeti, which you can appreciate from your heated plunge pool. We rode mountain bikes, played tennis, had massages, walked, tried our hand at archery followed by a leisurely time enjoying the world-class wine list, cigars to brag about and delicious food. The new visitors’ book already had some serious names in it. The game was excellent too! We had a gory view of a couple of male lions feeding on a giraffe and a great night drive one evening on the way home, getting to see some good nocturnal animals.

Later that month we camped in the very north of the Serengeti in an area called Wogakuria that we opened up a few years ago, having been closed for many years due to high levels of poaching. On our exploratory trips we camped rough and we struggled to see the game which was extremely hard to find and very shy. This year it was different. We were camped on the highest hill in the area, our tents set amongst granite boulders and fig trees, and we had incredible views. There was more game than I had ever seen there before. We could not have been luckier — there had been just the right amount of rain in the right spot, creating the perfect conditions for the animals and we were there at the height of the wildebeest, all of which conspired to provide us with a fantastic spectacle.

The beginning of September is the middle of the dry season here in East Africa and not the prime time to be birding, but on a safari with a couple of semi-serious birders on an itinerary that was geared more towards wildlife and culture we managed, after much discussion, to note 280 different species of birds in two weeks. The best bragging bird we saw was the blue swallow. We were amazed to see half a dozen of them flying over the long grasses of Ruma National Park in western Kenya.

The game on our private 20,000-acre conservancy bordering Amboseli National Park is getting better and better each year. We take our guests to Amboseli primarily to give them a chance to learn about the incredible Masai culture and to get close to huge elephants, we have never really thought of it as a big-cat destination. However, this year we have regularly seen cheetah and lion, sometimes very close to camp. This gives us hope that the combined effort being made by the Masai community and Ker & Downey to protect the area is beginning to pay off. There are two prides of lion that we see often, and the last time that we were there we saw a mother cheetah with five almost fully grown cubs, four of which were female. The mother was still a little shy but the cubs were very friendly.

Part of our concession is a parched salt flat of a lakebed and it is always great fun to spend time there. The pan is criss-crossed with game tracks etched out by herds in search of water. In the dry season there are trails of wildebeest, zebra, ostriches, giraffe and occasionally oryx, which move through the mirages on the dry lakebed. If you are very lucky, you get to see elephants crossing. They seem so much more majestic in the stark simplicity and bareness of the pan. There is nothing but flat earth, sky and elephants. Awestruck guests always go quiet as they walk past, totally silent except for the scrunch of the soda crust under their feet. At night, if you turn off all the lights and lie on your back in the darkness, you can see millions of stars suspended in the black-blue sky. It’s an amazing experience that makes you feel tiny.

Not all the animals that have visited our various camps have been large. In the Mara, a pair of big Bush babies has adopted us. They are very primitive nocturnal primates that feed on fruit, sap, resin, insects and sometimes larger things such as lizards, snails and bird eggs — and, more recently in their evolutionary history, large amounts of camp supplied banana. They are strange-looking creatures with furry dark-gray coats and long bushy tails. Their eyes are enormous, which helps them absorb what little light is available at night. Their call is a strangled scream and can be quite alarming if you do not know the source. When we were in camp we could hear the leaves rustling and small branches crashing as they leapt towards the mess tent in the early evening to raid our fruit bowl. Douglas, who looks after the mess tent, is always furious when they wait until we have all gone to bed to have their wild parties, crashing about on the bar, knocking over bottles and smashing glasses. A treat, though, to get so close to such shy creatures!

This has been a fine year for wildebeest and zebra crossings in the Mara. We were reminded why the Mara is the most impressive place to see the wildebeest migration, in terms of sheer animal numbers. The big herds came up across the Sand River early in June. Because the rain was patchy, there was more local migration than usual. This meant the animals had to cross the Mara River more often, which made for lots of dramatic viewing. The most amazing crossings occurred during the last two weeks of September. The main herds had been grazing on the northern side of the river, as it was still very dry to the south. Then huge storms enticed the wildebeest and zebra herds to navigate across the river in anticipation of new green grass. The crossings went on for hours and hours, with many tens of thousands animals crossing. Sometimes they were crossing 10 abreast. The sight of upward of 100,000 animals following the rains in search of food is mind-blowing. The scenes looked as if they belonged in a fantasy story of huge invading armies.

Best wishes for 2007,

Ninian, Lara, Jamey and Amelia

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