On a game drive, your eyes quickly adapt to detect the slightest movement: the rustle of leaves caused by a ring-tailed mongoose scrambling into its burrow like a bandit skittish warthogs running in the shrubs with their piglets the iridescent flash of blue and yellow from the wing of a starling. On landing, we were picked up by Sammy in a luxurious six-seater Land Cruiser, which came equipped with a professional Canon camera, binoculars, wildlife guidebooks, cold drinks and delicious mini quiches, which we devoured eagerly, before setting off along the dusty-pink tracks of the savannah wilderness. Soaring over the valleys newly made green by the October rain, towards Kenya’s border with Tanzania, I had a magnificent bird’s-eye view of a herd of elephants. ![]() ![]() My partner Zak and I had travelled west from Nairobi to the Masai Mara National Reserve by light aircraft that morning, following a restorative overnight stay at the grand Hemingways hotel in the city’s suburb Karen (named after Blixen, the Danish author of Out of Africa). There had been rumours circulating around the Naboisho Conservancy that she had given birth under a tent at Great Plains’ nearby Mara Nyika Camp-which we would be calling home for the next few days-and here was the first evidence of it. "Can you see her belly? She’s just had cubs." He was as excited as we were to behold one of the Masai Mara’s most elusive wild cats just a few metres away, feasting on a recent kill. ![]() "Look, there, on that branch," said our sharp-eyed guide, Sammy, cutting the engine of the 4WD and pointing to a female leopard sprawled high in an acacia-tree, her long tail dangling from the branch.
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