Rains have leavened (the season has not started till I have employed that word) the parched plains.
Close season - a stoic skeleton team of askaris patrols Mara Camp with diligence and propriety, unaware of their new tawny lodgers.
In a few days canvas will be zipped tight, ignitions shut down and camp fires doused. Guides, staff and pretty much the whole Kicheche family will take several weeks off. Many will be exhausted from a long season.
When you win, yes win a safari and are the envy of friends, colleagues and indeed enemies, the correct protocol is surely to keep your head down and do your safari time .... quietly.
Close to 20 Kicheche safaris each, perhaps our favourite son and daughter …..from Queensland …. Competitive ….? …. Never!
Sometimes you can only tell people so many times ...Jenny Varley has frankly spent far too long in a holding pattern before finally getting to Kicheche. She had the grace and class to tell me: 'Graham has taken more footage in the last four days than anywhere else'
This week our favourite is Leanne Cockayne. She had had her night disturbed as some local lions (Tikki’s daughters) had brought down a zebra close to the Valley Camp massage and aromatherapy chalet.
This time of year is the season for gushing insincerity, contentious and lizard-like lobbying and many crocodile tears.
From last week: "I wept at the airstrip before flying out, I didn't want to leave" ... aah.... a Kicheche remainer. *
Spotters, meet Murray, no stranger to this mercurial mail-out and indeed one of Bush Camp’s favourite sons. Murray has been a regular for many years but this January has outdone himself, with a whole pick and mix of cats with their candy-faced cubs.
