Kenya's Shabu and Samburu Parks, Meetings with Old Friends and New

The feeling of staying at a lodge surrounded by roaming elephants who regularly come by with a light, graceful step to feed at their favorite fruit tree is not easily forgotten.

Our second opportunity to spend some time in Kenya presented itself when Misha had another prolonged trip there in June. It was a few weeks of blessed cool (especially wonderful after Mumbai's sweltering monsoon-breaking weather), organic fruit- and vegetable-eating (the relatively mild climate is conducive to the growth of flavorful veggies and such national treasures as passionfruit, which the Kenyans call simply passion) and a trip to some incredible national parks just outside of Nairobi for a weekend.

Some of the pictures below are from Shaba National Park, a semi-arid desert distinguished by its rocky landscape punctuated by the Gothic flamboyant of its unique palm trees, dramatically etched against the sky at dusk (bottom picture).

Shaba's austere surroundings are distinguished more for their birdlife than their animals. This is an omission that the neighboring Samburu National Reserve, a sprawling, classic African savanna, makes up for with abandon. We were able to commune with our old friends--warthogs, vervet monkeys, waterbucks, baboons busily sifting through other animals' excrement in search of edible seeds, two lions at rest, the silly bustard bird, and the shy duik-duik, the world's smallest antelope. (All but the baboon pictured; I believe I've exceeded my lifetime limit of baboon photos).

And, also pictured here, were the creatures that I've never seen before: the long-horned oryx with its piebald muzzle--one of these, semi-domesticated, lived at our hotel--the cheetah, basking in the sun like a lazy cat, and the gerenuk, the only antelope in the world that can go up on its hind paws, which it does daintily, exposing its white underbelly and hungrily chewing up all the bushes that its less genetically gifted antelope friends cannot reach. There was also a leopard resting in a treetop whom we could only see through our powerful binoculars. Visibly disturbed, he looked out from his position with his huge, angry, beautiful green eyes, wishing that the motors of the cars would quiet down, leaving him alone once again to his rest and contemplation.