Kruger National Park

To be honest about it, it is difficult to describe Kruger. You visit Kruger or any other similar game reserve in Africa not just to see the animals but to experience timeless Africa within your heart of hearts. Earnest Hemingway did it, so did Robert Ruark and Peter Hathaway Capstick. Even President Roosevelt had felt it in his veins when he took a long safari in East Africa way back in 1908.

And we felt it too as we entered into the vastness of the twenty-five thousand square kilometers of Kruger National Park in South Africa about a month ago. But we were also lucky in several respects. One of the Kruger’s Big Five that consisted of elephants, buffalo, leopard, lion and rhino chose to appear and block the road in front of us as we crossed the gate to proceed a couple of miles inside. Imagine a towering tusker looming grotesquely large a few feet away from your windscreen with swinging trunk almost touching the bonnet of the Toyota. We had nothing else to do but to wait and see. So did a lot of other cars that piled up behind that of ours. However, after several long minutes that felt like hours the pachyderm finally decided to leave us alone and ambled off into the nearby bush.

We traveled by asphalted road and gravel tracks all through the day and saw many animals, save and except the rest of the big five. There were zebra, giraffe, impala and wildebeest in great number. We came across warthogs wallowing in the sludge at many waterholes and a family of baboons foraging at the roadside meadow. But what amazed us most was their camouflage. You see a giraffe now and the next moment that tall fellow is lost to sight as he stands next to a baobab, trying to rub his chin against its loftier branches.

Even though there are several lunching spots spread all over Kruger, we chose the Satara Campsite that had a fine restaurant. We ordered steak but were offered omelets. ‘No meat, Bawana’, lamented the cook-cum-steward, ‘the baboons had raided the camp before lunch hour and everything has been pilfered. Only a few eggs kept in the cupboard have been saved’. We had no other option but to gorge as many omelets as possible and then leave the place in search of the lions as these predators are often seen in late afternoon, stalking an impala or a kudu straggler that has come out of the herd and then feels difficult to rejoin.

And indeed this happened right in front of us. On taking a turn towards Szukuza Camp we suddenly came across a lioness stalking a larger kudu through the grassland, its belly almost touching the ground while three more lionesses simultaneously charged at their prey from three other sides. Needless to say, the prey animal was run down and killed very shortly when a strange thing happened. A massive black-maned lion appeared from behind the bush a few feet behind our vehicle, ambled over leisurely towards the kill and literally toasted the meat. I was later informed about this strange custom among lions in which the male leads a lordly life, doing nothing except eating and mating while his harem members provide his food on their own.