Africa is full of wonderful opportunties to go on safari, but we had heard from friends that many times, animals in Kenya safari drives were so tame that they came up right to the car. We wanted to see otherwise, so we decided to take a two day safari to the Ngorongoro crater- which is the largest unbroken caldera in the world. Millions of years ago, the Ngorongoro volcano collapsed in on itself, creating the caldera.
We took a 4 hour drive with Duma Safari (Riwald at rshelus@yahoo.com) from Moshi to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Along the way, we saw many Maasai villages and groups of young Maasai boys. Many of the Maasai boys were standing by the side of the road, deliberately moving their heads to attract the attention of the people driving by, so that the tourists would stop, take photos with the boys and pay them money for the honor of taking the photo! Our driver told us that these boys were in warrior training. When the boys are ready to become warriors ("Moran"), all boys of the same age group get circumcised, after which they will dress in black and paint their faces white. They will dress like this for eight to twelve months. After this period they'll become Morani - we had heard that they have to kill a lion in this training period in order to become Morani. The present Morani from the preceeding age-group will now become elders ("Mzee"). 
Another interesting fact is that the Maasai take their animals into the Ngorongoro crater for grazing - they sometimes have to defend their herd against predators such as lions with only their spears. Along the way, we also stopped at a farm for lunch - the farm turned out to be owned by a Gujarati family from the Kutch region of Gujarat - how funny and random!
The crater (610 metres deep and 260 km squared) is a microcosm of East African scenery and game - 25,000 larger animals within the crater itself, mostly zebra and wildebeest but you can also see flamingos, elephants, cheetahs, gnus, lions (if you're lucky) and hippos. We hopped into a 4x4 with a pop up roof and set off with Deo- a wonderful guide who could spot a still animal lying down in the bush half a mile away, while we used our binoculars in vain!
We took so many pictures that we can’t post them all, but here are some of the highlights along with some wildlife facts we learned (see, this is an educational trip!) FYI, these photos were actually taken by us and are not taken from the WWF website!
We saw hundreds of zebras. They didn't seem too nervous - even though several cheetahs and lions were close by. Every zebra has its own distinctive striped pattern not duplicated in any other zebra - this enables baby zebras to identify their mothers easily.
There were tons of ostriches walking around the savannah. Huge birds! Male ostriches are white and black and females are mostly a drab grey. 
Deo drove us to the hippo pool - there were about 30 hippos there, lying in the water. Once in a while, they would rear up and snap at each other. If you see an upside down hippo with four legs sticking up into the air, it’s not dead, just having fun staying cool in the water! Hippos only come out of the water at night to feed. 
We saw a lion sleeping in the grass. Not willing to settle for seeing just a sleeping lion, Deo, our guide, revved the jeep engine, waking up the lion. Once awake, the lion stretched and then stood up, surveying the landscape before him in majestic fashion. He then strode down the small hill and into a small riverbed. We saw a few lionesses as well during the day - they were sleeping, presumably after having eaten their fill earlier in the day. In lion prides, females do all the hunting and males lie around waiting to get their dinner. Later during that game drive, the same lion walked across the road and sprayed one of the jeeps to mark it as his territory - everybody got a good laugh out of this. 
We saw some birds with funny names like bustards! 
We were lucky enough to stay in the crater itself (Ngorongoro Wildlife Lodge)- there are a few campsites and lodges built around the crater rim. We had a wonderful panoramic view of the entire crater floor, which was especially interesting at night when some animals came to the lake below to drink and early morning as the sun rose and the colors across the valley changed. 
On the second day, we saw an elephant attacking a grove of trees and tearing down all the branches. Apparently, the only elephants within the crater are old males that have come to die there. 
The lion that we saw before was also wandering around in the same vicinity. Unfortunately, these two did not end up running into each other - now that would have been fun to see!
A distinctive smell (marshy/salty) brought us to the flamingos. There were moving around the lake bed, long skinny necks plunging in and out of the sand looking for food. 
There were plenty of gazelles 
as well, in addition to springboks.
We saw four cheetahs walking together a few yards away from us! After a little while, they broke into a slow run - apparently, they had spotted prey. The cheetahs were extremely graceful and powerful. They can reach speeds of upto 120 kmph (75 miles per hour)! They ran for a little bit and then hunched down in the grass, waiting for their prey to drift closer while grazing. A whole bunch of tour jeeps converged like flies to watch the cheetahs stalk their prey. Unfortunately, the cheetahs did not make their move while we were there.
If you are planning on going on this trek, get in touch with Riwald at rshelus@yahoo.com or Bobby Tours at www.bobbytours.com.
- Smruti
Comments