Above: Lioness at dawn in Maasai Mara National Reserve August 2018
Copyright Rupi Mangat 2018
The wildebeest crossing takes the entire day. The following morning packed with a picnic breakfast and lunch from Crocodile Camp on the banks of the Talek river by Talek gate, we’re inside the reserve but this time heading to the Olkiombo plains on the west side of Mara with the Oloololo escarpment lined in the horizon. The Talek is a main tributary flowing into the mighty Mara River. Continue reading “The Big Cats of the Mara”→
Above: Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka conducting gorilla clinical observation at Mount Tshiabirimu, DRC August 2008
Published The East African – Nation media 25-31 August 2018
Kanyonyi, Silverback from Mubare Gorilla Group Copyright CTPH
Picture:Kanyonyi, 21 year old leader of Mubare group, died on December 9th 2017 after sustaining serious injuries during multiple attacks by a solitary silverback named Maraya. He was one of Dr Kalema-Zikusoka’s favourite gorillas.
Above: The annual Mara Migration of the wildebeest from the Serengeti
Copyright Rupi Mangat
Sunrise in thel Mara Copyright Rupi Mangat
There is excitement in the air. We’ve been on the plains since sunrise, watching the sun shed its light on the vast grass plains of the Maasai Mara, tinting the long stalks gold and warming the earth. It’s the time of plenty and the wildebeest take full advantage of the good tidings following the grass route from the neighbouring Serengeti and into the Mara, mowing the grass down as they move in a tidal wave. And we’re following them in the hope of watching a river crossing.
After the grand spectacle of the blood moon that lasted an hour and 43 minutes, the sun rises red hot with splashes of pink and gold that l watch from the luxury of my room at Magadi Sports Club. The plan is to leave before the sun gets too hot to see the wildlife in Shompole Conservancy between the caustic lakes of Magadi and Natron with a stop at Natron. Natron is in Tanzania but with the heavy rains, the lake has flooded into Kenya.
No causeway across the salt pan at Magadi – copyright Rupi Mangat
The causeway that would have shortened our journey through Magadi’s flat soda pans is aborted because it’s been washed away with the heavy rains. The longer route along Magadi’s salt-lined dry moonscape is welcome, watching hordes of lesser flamingos, some greater flamingos, pelicans, yellow-billed storks and the smaller waders. Magadi’s little endemic fish, the Magadi tilapia attract the fish-eating birds.
Pink trona pan on lake Magadi – copyright Rupi Mangat
“When Magadi is dry, it’s a pink lake,” tells Duncan Kitipa, the local Maasai Guide with Lake Magadi Adventures, a community project under Magadi Soda Foundation where all profits are channelled to the Maasai members for development projects.
Kitipa continues. “But after the heavy rains in April, the Ewaso Nyiro River (not to be confused with the Samburu one) flowing from Narok in the north changed course and flooded everything, destroying peoples’ homes and the causeway.”
Medicinal hot springs of Magadi – copyright Rupi Mangat
Stepping out on the salt-crusted shoreline, the famous hot-springs are underwater with few bubbles pointing to them. The water in the drowned springs is nevertheless hot. Stepping in, it feels therapeutic because the water is said to be medicinal.
“There are a million lesser flamingos in Magadi now, something l have never seen,” tells our young guide.
Kitipa by Shompole Hill in Shompole conservancy -copyright Rupi Mangat
It is on these salt flats that one of the greatest dramas in nature was played out. In 1962, more than 850,000 chicks hatched in Lake Magadi – something never witnessed. Heavy rains that year had flooded the birds’ traditional nesting ground on Natron. So while there was a lot of algae to feed on in Natron, there was nowhere to nest. The pink beauties descended en masse on Lake Magadi to nest.
The eggs hatched but more heavy rain flooded the nesting grounds. What followed was a crisis. The factory began drawing the freshwater. The water in the lake became super alkaline trapping thousands of flamingo chicks with salt bangles or “anklets” on the legs as the water receded.
The chicks began to die.
Lesser flamingos and teal in Lake Magadi- copyright Rupi Mangat
It led to a massive rescue operation by the Alan Root, a wildlife filmmaker with the late Leslie Brown who was the first to study flamingos. Over 27,000 flamingo chicks were rescued helped by the community including local school kids who caught the shackled chicks and brought them to the ‘hammerers’ to free the birds. The Magadi Soda Company started pumping fresher water back into part of the lake.
The egg that didn’t hatch – Flamigo egg at Lake Natron – copyright Rupi Mangat
Another 200,000 were saved by driving them each day away from the super-alkaline water and keeping them near the soda factory. One pink flamingo chick that was fitted with a ring during that fateful season was found dead on 13th February 2013 by a British tourist having lived a grand old age of 50, flying between the saline lakes of the Great Rift Valley in search of spirulina algae.
Shompole Conservancy at Midday with the massifs of Shompole and Sambu in the horizon – copyright Rupi Mangat
The lake fades and the massif of Shompole appears – tall and majestic. It’s midday and we make our way into the conservancy. By now, every single sensible animal has taken to the shade and any sign of the amazing elephants, elands, African wild dogs and even lions is a far-fetched dream. Dust devils rise in the scorching heat and in the midst of all this starkness we’re suddenly in a fig forest of tall majestic trees more than a hundred years old. It’s a leisurely picnic with baboons squealing and bird song.
Fig forest at Shompole for a picnic – copyright Rupi Mangat
The road to Natron is not far and driving past the Maasai villages, we are on the shores of the caustic lake between the mountains of Shompole and Sambu. The lake stretches into infinity. The road into Tanzania has been swallowed by the lake but the lesser flamingos feed on unperturbed.
The golf course by shores of Lake Magadi – copyright Rupi Mangat
Seated Maasai giraffe at dusk in Magadi. Copyright Rupi Mangat
Magadi Soda Club Copyright Rupi Mangat
Lake Natron, 54 km from Lake Magadi, is the only breeding site of the lesser flamingo in East Africa and one of the five in the world. It therefore is a very important place for the pretty pink bird.
Lesser flamingo, Lake Bogoria – Copyright Maya Mangat
Up to 2.5 million lesser flamingos, representing more than three-quarters of the global population, frequent the highly alkaline lakes in Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Lake Nakuru and Lake Bogoria are the most important feeding sites. Flamingos need a regular receding flood to construct nesting mounds, and mining disturbs this natural cycle. Tata Chemicals decision not to mine at Natron has been a welcome decision.
It was the red rock in the night sky at Island Camp Baringo that spurred me to Lake Magadi to watch the longest total lunar eclipse of the 21st century on Friday 27th July 2018 that lasted an hour and 43 minutes. I wasn’t risking the event of the century in cloudy Nairobi. Magadi, lying low in the rift, always hot as hell with clear skies, was my closest escape from Nairobi. When Kenya Museum Society announced the trip to witness the blood moon there, l was on it.
Buff overlooking Lake Magadi with Duncan Ole Kitipa
My imagination was already running riot with a startling red moon filling the sky with an equally red Mars, the closest it’s been to the moon in 15 years. Continue reading “In Magadi’s Magical Moonlight”→
Moonlion Safaris 