After a long trek from Nairobi in to the Masai Mara game reserve we headed straight out into the bush. It was great to be back. The last time we were in the Mara was for the Great Migration, now, 18 months on what a difference!
During the migration the Wildebeest trim the grass right down to its roots, but in the few months that they had vacated the planes, the grass had grown back with a vengeance. Tracking down the animals was going to be tough in these conditions, but this just added to the excitement.
Slowly driving along the tracks looking through the tall grass and into the bush our search began. It was not long before we had out first sighting, and what a sight it would turn out to be. Deep in the bush we saw some movement. As we looked closer, the smallest lion cub rolled out of the shadows, followed by another, and then a third. With eyes closed, they climbed over mums back leg and worked their way to her belly to feed.
This was a dream, we were less than 3 meters away from the next generation of Mara lions. What a fantastic start to our adventure, it seemed that this was third time lucky as we had never seen cubs so small, these had just been born. We could only hope the rest of the trip would follow the same way.
Although the lioness and cubs were not phased by our presence, we decided to move on and leave them to settle in for the evening. As we drove away, Godfrey told us that there was another lioness not far from the mum and cubs, so we headed out to find her. This was shaping up to be a lion packed evening. Laying on the crest of a hill catching the evening rays she lay calling, “Listen…… can you hear?” Godfrey could hear another lion calling back. “lets go and see….. He cant be far”
Our experienced guide was correct, less than half a kilometre away lay a fantastic looking male lion. He lay there without a care in the world and as the light faded he became more restless. As we watched, he rolled over several times, yawned twice and gave us the most intense stare we’ve seen from a Lion, this was his patch and boy did we know it! Again, in the distance we could hear the lioness from earlier calling and without question our Lion king called back.
The evening closed in and we could hear the haunting sound of the hyenas in the distance.
As we made our way back to camp and crossed the Talek River, I could only wonder how the young cubs would fare through thier first night in the bush…. Would we see them again?…. What would tomorrow bring for them? What would tomorrow bring for us?
