Masai Mara morning

Tuesday 15th March

When I came out of our cabin I realised that the strange noise I had been hearing was from vervet monkeys jumping onto the cabin roofs (which were made of canvas, making them theoretically "tents").

We got underway by 8.30am and after a bumpy descent to the park gate were soon entering the Masai Mara National Reserve.

There's no point trying to fit all the animals we saw into a narrative — and I was too busy looking to take any notes — so the following is just a selection of photos in the order they were taken.

Duncan had the radio on, listening for updates from other vehicles, but I think the only "notifiable" sightings were the big cats. We saw two groups of lions — a pride in the distance eating a buffalo, and a pride sleeping under trees right next to the road — and two groups of cheetah — a female by herself, lying on an overgrown termite mound, and three males lying together around a bush. The last three groups were surrounded by a queue of vehicles, but the animals seemed unconcerned and had presumably become accustomed to this.