The plan was to be ready by 5 am to head out to Amboseli National Park. We were right on time and breakfast was already loaded into the car. Fairly quick drive into the park. Saw more elephants again, they are such beautiful calm animals ❤️ saw the pride of lions again, this time they lazily sauntered away and we then saw a hyena come in their spot scavenging for any leftovers. The special treat in this game drive was when driving via one road, no other vans/jeeps around, I thought I saw a lion but it also looked like a lot of a tree. Tanush then shouted it’s a lion and lo and behold we saw a male lion for the first time. It was amazing, sitting by itself wondering why we were staring at him. He got up and walked away behind some bushes. I was terrified he will suddenly come up from somewhere else and attack us 😅 this was a unique experience as we were the only one, there weren’t 50 other jeeps around us with their mega lenses around us. We felt super lucky and special. After this, another treat to their eyes was seeing 100’s of zebras and wildebeest near a river. It was beautiful, we even saw two wildebeest get into a fight.

After this it was breakfast time. Our driver drove us to a hill where we could have a picnic breakfast . When he said he needed help carrying the food up the hill, I quickly opted out and said we would all have breakfast near the jeep and then go up the hill for the view. I was disappointed to find that the coffee and tea flasks that were promised to be packed were not in there after all. Aside from that, everything else was there. Our omelettes, fruits, toast etc.

After breakfast we went up the hill and the view was indeed amazing. With our binoculars we were able to spot 8 or 10 hippos, plenty of zebra, wildebeest, birds etc. my dad and uncle claimed they saw Mt Kilimanjaro for a bit but I saw no trace of it. after this I don’t quite remember much else in terms of animal sightings and we headed back to our camp for lunch.

I couldn’t wait to have some coffee and helped myself to 2 cups of delicious Kenyan coffee. Saw a herd of elephants again near the watering hole and this time a group of baboons as well joined. Such a nice view right from where we were seated for lunch. as mentioned earlier, service is not about speed. While I thought I was clever by putting in our lunch order at 1:30 pm, all of us freshened up and seated ourselves at 2:00pm. ,our food came to us at 2:45 pm, I’m not kidding.

When my dad was being himself and asked our waiter “where is our food?!” I enjoyed the banter between Rithvi and my dad. She started with “thatha, you are kinda rude”, after his pushback about how long they are taking she says “your tone isn’t right” 😂 it was a lot funnier that it sounds now.Rithvi was very happy to get Arun thatha’s support in her feedback about her thatha. I had to defuse by pointing to her that her Ajji sounds rude too, to get some of the heat off. It’s also true – to anyone she interacted with “do it!” “Give it!”. I had to remind my mom to use her thank you’s! And she retorted that it was weird 🤦🏾‍♀️

The evening plan I.e. 4 pm was to drive to a nearby Masai village and learn about their culture. We headed out as planned and our driver drove us into one village and introduced us to the chief. On our way, the clouds finally cleared and we were able to see Mt Kilimanjaro!! We got a lovely shot where a giraffe was munching on the side of the road with the mountain in the backdrop! It was perfect. At the Masai village, the chief explained that these visits and our payments contribute to a common fund for a collection of masai villages. We paid $100 for the 6 of us. They started with a dance that I, Tanush, mom and uncle participated in. Dad took videos while Rithvi watched, she didn’t want to join.

The woman who held my hand during the dance was 39 years old and said she had 4 kids. after this, we went into the village, started with a little bit about their traditional medicines. After the walk through they were looking to us to purchase any, unfortunately no volunteers on that. Next was showing how they quickly start fires in the traditional way, then a tour inside one of the homes. This did feel weird, being in someone’s personal space. They are mud homes with tiny holes to let in light. Pretty cramped and while my eyes adjusted to the light in the home, I met “Happiness”, the cutest little baby sitting on his mammas lap and cooing away to glory 😘

After this, the chief walked us to the market. Here the women each had laid out their bead works and we walked around while they coaxed us to buy their work. We came away with many times, bracelets, rings, earring, a total of $150. Still not bad for what we got. We wrapped with another dance and then headed back to our camp.

We were pretty beat. Tomorrow was checkout day. Had our dinner and retired for the night.