Kenya 2018 18/02/2018

This is a very long overdue post, my last being from New York in December 2016. The worst of getting behind is the difficulty of beginning afresh, there are always reasons to put it off and the problem compounds.

2017 was a good year, trips to Bhutan, Thailand, France, Tobago and Bequia but now it's 2018 and a fresh start.

We leave for Kenya on Tuesday and are in the final scrambling stages of pack/repack and getting our luggage weight down below 15 kilos since we'll be on a series of small local flights with pretty restrictive weight allowances. It's our second visit to Kenya's Maasai Mara and our 5th trip to Africa in the last 5 or 6 years. On all of our trips, wildlife photography has been one of the key drivers in the choices we have made and the current trip is springing from the same motivation. The difference this time however is our itinerary. Whereas in each of our earlier trips we included a couple of safari camps, 3 or 4 days in each one, this time we will be spending time, 12 days, in only one camp.

Our experience with the varied camps has always been good but I have always been left with a sense of rush; arrive in a camp, a couple of game drives a day with a 2 or 3 others in the vehicle, and off to the next camp. And as pleasant as our vehicle companions have been, interests and expectations are not necessarily shared so there is a tendency on the part of the guides to try and pack in as much in the time available to make sure that everyone has their needs met and all their boxes ticked.

This trip is intended to redress the balance. We are staying at Kandili Camp and have our own private vehicle and driver and we're looking forward to taking things a little more slowly, spending a whole day in one spot if we want and just getting a much better sense of place and patterns. We have chosen this time of the year as the rainy season has not yet started and the grasses should be low which makes for easier viewing and at this time of the year there should be lots of young animals to be seen. On our last visit to the Maasai Mara in 2014, we came across a mother leopard with one surviving cub; our driver and our vehicle companions did spend some time with them but left to our own devices, we would have happily spent the largest part of our time with the two of them and made them a focus of our attention.

Really looking forward to this trip. Back to packing!