I am writing this at 4 AM sitting on our balcony overlooking the most expansive and gorgeous vista I have ever beheld. The sky here is massive, with views for hundreds of miles in all directions. Like the Taj Mahal and the others mentioned, I have now been to four places that were ‘breathtaking”. However, here it was not breathtaking, no here I stopped breathing. When we landed, I stood and turned to every side and tried to take it all in, while realizing where I was.

Our accommodations, the Four Seasons – Serengeti, are over the top by every measure. Getting here was quite the journey, but I digress.

The flight from Kathmandu to Kilimanjaro is a smart eight hours. As indicated before, our airport in Agra is a small military base (built by the US), and we are the only plane there. Regardless, we are put through three levels of intense security, full scans of body and bags, some just feet apart for the other. The world today is an ugly, angry shell of its’ former self, in my opinion never to return to the kind of carefree trust I recall as a child.

When we finally board, our crack and crazy crew meets us in full Indian garb…

Settled in, we have two lectures, and I attempt unsuccessfully to finish watching “Out of Africa”. We fly over the Arabian Sea and land in Kilimanjaro to dust devils…

…and, again, three levels of security. We actually had to go through one level, walk out of the tiny airport to another door and enter to another screening.

People wile away the time any way they can…

From the Kilimanjaro airport we transfer to chartered smaller planes for the hour flight to the Serengeti airport…

We then jump into our safari trucks for the hour and half ride to our hotel out in the bush…

Spoiler alert, the remaining part of the blog is very picture heavy in my attempt tp capture just a fraction of the immense wildlife and scenery.

On our jarring ride into the bush (the locals call the driving here a “Serengeti massage” as all roads are dirt, heavily rutted, and full of holes) presents us with a huge array of animals…

As mentioned, our hotel is crazy nice, and all rooms have a view out onto the plains of the Serengeti.

From our bathroom window we see a Cape Buffalo ambling about right under our deck…

We are briefed on the do’s/don’ts to follow during our bush drive the next day. We fall asleep to the sights and sounds of Africa…

We have an early breakfast overlooking the property…

Next we board our safari trucks and head into the bush for a full day of tracking the animals over this massive landscape. The guides are on their radios helping and directing one another to hotspots of activity. We eventually see every animal we wanted to see, and MANY more, with the exception of a cheetah and giraffe. (Here come the pictures).

In one part of the plains we came upon a zebra & wildebeest migration. These animals travel together in a non-ending search for water and grasslands, and number well into the many tens of thousands. Our driver drove right through the middle of all these animals, who gave us no more than snort and disgruntled look in getting out of the truck’s way…

After winding our way through the masses a herd of elephant sauntered within 10 feet, giving us no thought at all.

We returned to the river full of hippos from the afternoon before only to catch a couple in flagrante. That is until his “buddies” knocked him out of the saddle and the fighting began…

Male gazelles oversee harems of 50+ females, take that LDS’s, so we saw several groups of all males, still too young to challenge the dominant male but out building their strength and skills…

We noticed a lot of banners in royal and navy blue. Come to find out those colors attract tse tse flies, and the banner cloth is treated with an insecticide. Kinda like a massive fly strip. That is all wheel and good, but I am here to attest that the the tse tse flies are still doing just fine in spite of this effort.

Our group took up 7-8 safari trucks, no less than 10,000 pictures were taken collectively…

Afterwards in our room C was saying how great the day was and that the only thing that could make it better would be if we could see some giraffe. As the word “giraffe” came out of her mouth a small herd of giraffes walked by our balcony…

Walking to our dinner we saw…

Before dinner we were treated to a presentation by Louise Leakey, granddaughter of Louis, and daughter of Mary and Richard Leakey – the leading family of paleo anthropologist for the past 80 years. She is carrying on the family work to this day.

Then we were off to a bush dinner on the property which included local music, dancing, and food…

We were fortunate to dine with Louise and had a wide ranging discussion about the inevitable decline and ultimate extinction of our species, as all species so do. While I agreed with her predictions, but not necessarily her timeline, they do not leave one with a light, airy feeling.

The next day is to be a brutal one of travel to get us to Petra, Jordan. After the hour drive in we are told that there has been a military coup d’état in Sudan affecting our flight plans, so we must wait to see what accommodations can be made…