Tarangire National Park

 It’s not possible that I stay in Kenya, Africa and not visit “ The” most sought after place for one of the best safaris in the world – Tanzania, a country like Kenya that is full of wilderness and vast savannah. People who know me, know how crazy I am about animals. I think majority of people who stay in Kenya do visit Tanzania either for safari or beach. Zanzibar being one of the most beautiful beaches, however, after staying in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, visiting pristine beaches of Seychelles, Thailand, Mauritius etc, Zanzibar never attracted me. Ok, back on track, so here I was trying to make my way to Serengeti and see the most viable and economic way to get there. I was excited to see one of the most thrilling natural reserves of Tanzania.

Early morning we left our house and in a little more than 2 hours we were at the Namanga border (Kenya & Tanzania border); after getting our passports stamped and getting our visa, we took few pictures at the border and also at no man’s land- a land piece between the 2 countries that belongs to no one. The travel agency that we decided to go with was willing to pick us up from home and take us to the border, however we decided to save few bucks on that and drove our car till the border and our driver brought our car back home. We walked past the border to the Tanzanian car which would have been the case even if we went with the travel agent’s vehicle. I had to take advantage of the fact that I am staying in the neighboring country.

We settled in a comfortable land cruiser excited to see a slightly different terrain and have a new experience. Our road led us through small lively towns with modern architecture and rickety buildings. We drove through chaotic traffic from time to time, matatus, motorcycles, cars and through the hustle bustle of lives. Then slowly the scenery started to change, we started driving past mud-colored huts, locals in their bright colored clothes doing their day-to-day business and small excited kids waving wildly at us. Finally, we reached Tarangire National Park which is in Northern Tanzania and reached just in time for lunch at Tarangire Sopa Lodge. The kids couldn’t control their excitement when they saw the pool and decided to swim while they were setting up lunch for us by the pool side. It was a hot day and kids had a blast swimming and splashing around. We let the kids have some fun before we took them for a game drive which generally starts at around 3.30pm. 

Tarangire National Park is a least known wildlife destination, although the national park is full of wild animals of all sorts, yet it is overshadowed by the popularity of Ngorongoro and Serengeti. However, this was the perfect place to begin the Tanzanian safari. Our journey started by seeing a giraffe which had lost it’s tail somehow was relishing leaves from the acacia trees. There are always so many stories scattered all around the savannah that lights up my heart with enthusiasm. We were surrounded by many species of birds and this national park is a bird watcher’s paradise.

Tarangire is also known as the Kingdom of Pachyderms. Our next encounter were the magnificent elephants, which this national park is famous for.  We saw so many different herds of elephants all around with their calves. In some big herds, the babies of almost the same age, played with each other wrestling with their trunks and chasing each other, a further ahead in another herd 2 juveniles played with each other by locking their trunks. 

We also saw many gazelles, impalas, ostrich, mongoose, baboons, bush buck and of course a resting king of the jungle. The zebras grazed on the green grass wandering from one baobab tree to the other. We saw so many baobao trees also known as tree of life that are also in Kenya but not as huge and in so many numbers as in this park.  While we were enjoying our safari suddenly, we felt something biting us at intervals and this was our first encounter with the notorious Tzetse fly. 

After our safari, we settled back into our camp and had dinner. The sound of wilderness brings in a kind of tranquility in me that I find all worries of the world melting away, even though it’s temporary but the weight is out at least for a while. I slipped into my bed to embark on a new adventure the next day.