Simba time in Tanzania, Africa

May 19, 2023

Mr Sumit Batabyal, Director of a travel firm, Wandervogel and a good friend always nagged me that that I should visit Ndutu in Tanzania at least once to enjoy real African wild life beyond Mass Migration. He always highlighted that in February each year, thousands upon thousands of wildebeest and zebras migrated to Ndutu mainly to calve thousands of foals. And taking full advantage of this opportunity, all the predators from lions, cheetahs, hyenas, leopards, foxes and even large birds like vultures and eagles, lie in wait in close proximity so that they can feast on the hapless foals or their parents at the first opportunity. And the opportunities are many and come often.

Needing no further coaxing, in mid-February, 2016, six of us comprising my friend of nearly 60 years Mr Udayan Das Gupta, his lovely wife Sharmila, my nephew-in-law, Dr Pranab Ghosh, and Mr Gautam Sen and Mrs Anjana Sen who are good friends of Udayan made it to the Kilimanjaro airport on 16 February 2016. There we were met by Mr Peter of Leopard Tours—our driver-cum-guide for the next 12 days. And what a wonderful guide he turned out to be.

We had a wonderful 12 days in Tanzania seeing many animals and birds including a rare experience of two cheetah brothers giving chase to a wildebeest family and then catching the baby for a sumptuous meal. Gory, but that is life in the Tanzanian jungles. I nurture the hope of one day writing a complete travelogue covering the entire Tanzanian experience like I did for Kenya. But for the time being, I just want to post a small experience on lions. Lions were literally aplenty, present everywhere we went, so much so that at one point, Udayan started counting the number of lions sighted and soon the rest of us also joined in the count. Once past 100, we lost interest in sighting any more lions and whenever Peter showed us anymore, we would all say in unison, “No, No, No”, urging him to show us more cheetahs or leopards or rare birds instead.

Nevertheless, we saw many lions in interesting positions like lying on a rock, in groups of twos or threes or in all alone, a pride of lions occupying the whole road or lions in a cave; even a lion just below where I sat. Here, I post a few pictures and I hope you will enjoy what you see.