Safari is the raison d’être of East African tourism, like the pyramids in Egypt or cheap fags in Calais. For some undefined reason, flying halfway across the world to watch a variety of amusingly shaped mammals avoiding each other has become one of the must-do travel experiences of our time, alongside frolicking with dolphins and throwing yourself out of a plane. For some folk, of course, seeing a lioness tear through the flesh of a baby zebra is the stuff of childhood dreams, but for others, it seems that much of safari’s attraction lies in its exclusivity.
Put simply, safaris don’t come cheap. In Tanzania, you’re unlikely to find a tour for under $120 per day, and these budget safaris often come with a big catch (a lack of big cats being one example). The upper end of the price spectrum, meanwhile, is pretty much nonexistent, with 7-star hotels, hot air balloon rides and sundowners on the Serengeti meaning it’s possible to spend the equivalent of the region’s GDP tailoring the trip to your ‘needs’.
We opted for a three-day mid-range safari on the Northern Circuit, covering the Ngorogoro, Tarangire and Lake Manyara national parks. (The Serengeti, also on the Northern Circuit, is a bit further afield.) Now for someone used to shoestring travel, this ‘mid-range’ seems pretty luxurious. For one thing, all travel is by means of chauffeur-driven, air-conditioned, low-emission 4x4 (the kind you see in swanky London boroughs). On top of this, the game lodges are plush, expansive affairs, complete with pools, terraces and the obligatory colonial-era trappings (everything from wicker chairs to a waiting staff comprising tribesmen in over-starched uniforms).
And then there are the game drives themselves. Needless to say, attempting to convey the spectacle of safari in writing is a fairly impoverished venture, like describing the taste of a single malt whiskey or reviewing an opera on Twitter. For this reason, I offer only some brief and entirely anthropomorphic highlights from our short safari, starting with the Ngorogoro Crater.
A volcanic caldera over 600m deep, the Ngorogoro Crater is like the inverse of Conan Doyle’s tepui-top Lost World. Inside are some 25,000 large mammals whose forebears, by virtue of their isolation, escaped the crosshairs of colonial hunters. Today, tourists visit the crater with high hopes of spying the so-called ‘Big 5’ (elephant, buffalo, lion, leopard and rhinoceros), which exist here in greater numbers than almost anywhere else in Africa. Of these, the first three are usually easy to see, the latter pair almost impossible. And so, to make things more interesting, I resolved to establish an alternative, ‘Small(er) 5’, namely, the jackal, the mongoose, the serval, the aardvark and the honey badger. What odds of sighting this motley crew?
The Ngorogoro Crater is vast, flat and relatively treeless, which gives its sweeping, sunburnt savanna a faded, painterly quality. As such, your chances of spotting anything more interesting than a mosquito can seem surprisingly slim, but a decent pair of binoculars should tip things back in your favour. And if like me you’re prone to nerdy excess and have bought a pair of Russian military 90x magnification binoculars off eBay, well, more power to you. (In Soviet Russia, animals spot you!) Not long after entering the crater, they’re already justifying their inclusion. While my fellow safari-goers amuse themselves with a pack of sleepy lions, I’m transfixed by a black and grey blob about a mile in the distance. Could it be? It is! A honey badger! The world’s most cantankerous creature! He shuffles about, rooting for things, chewing at bits and bobs. And while all eyes are on the lions, he and I share a moment, a second or two in which I am the only one aware of his presence, and probably the only one who cares. But a honey badger? – it’s worth ten lions! Later in the day, as the sun slips low across the sky, our path is crossed by a serval - the cheetah’s foppish cousin - and we leave the crater happy, with two of the ‘Small(er) 5’ under our belts. (Not literally of course; smuggling wild animals in one’s trousers is a crime, not to mention a pain in the arse.)
Our next port of call is Lake Manyara, described by Ernest Hemingway in one of his less eloquent moments as the ‘loveliest [lake] in Africa’. The surrounding national park is largely forested, which makes for more intimate encounters with the various inhabitants. Among these, the tree-climbing lions usually receive top billing, but I’m more intrigued by the characterful co-stars, and none so much as the jackal (the Steve Buscemi of the animal world). This time the binoculars aren’t needed, just a vociferous shout of ‘STOP!!’ to our driver-cum-guide, who seems hell-bent on delivering us lions at the expense of all other creatures (presumably because his tip usually depends on it). Beside our car strides a side-striped jackal, an elegant little omnivore, aloof yet amicable: a lesson in humility for those limelight-hogging lions... 3 out of 5.
Last on our itinerary is Tarangire, a park famed for its giant, Ent-like baobabs and, moreover, for its myriad herds of elephants. There are enough of the latter here to make a thousand grand pianos, but of more interest to me are the towering, organ-like termite mounds and their furry little squatters. Though 10,000 times smaller than an African elephant, the dwarf mongoose is no less intriguing. (In fact, given that they take down snakes for a living and team up with hornbills to go foraging, you could argue that the mongoose is a whole lot more interesting. I mean, when was the last time you saw an elephant wrestle with a poisonous reptile twice its size? (That’s a rhetorical question.)) So a mongoose I was after, and mongooses I got. As well as bedding down in empty termite nests, the little fellows like to hide beneath rocks in the dry riverbed, and it’s here, among the baboons and vervet monkeys, that I spot a 10-strong family group. 4 out of 5.
And that was that. Alas, the final creature on my list – the aardvark – eluded us this time, but then you’ve got to have something to come back for. And this is the thrill of safari: there’s always something more to see. With a keen eye, a strong stomach and an appreciation for all creatures great and small, you’ll find that the wild world heritage of Tanzania serves up an endlessly engaging drama, a play of life and death, tragedy and farce, in which our own species was once but a background player.