Kenya Photo Tour Day 13 Masai Mara

©Wolfgang Kaehler

Kenya Photo Tour Day 13 Masai Mara

Another great day in the Masai Mara: we started the morning driving to the northern part where a large pride of lions reside, the Marsh Pride. We found the lions immediately on the top of the steep riverbanks of the Mara River. There were several females, cubs and a beautiful male lion. After photographing them in the nice morning light several safari vehicles standing at bushes caught our attention and we headed over there to find a female leopard running towards the river. We followed the leopard until we decided to go back to the lions where we got into a great position to photograph them. Close to the lions was a tree and we noticed that the cub from the leopard was in the tree watching the lions carefully. If the lions would catch the young leopard, they would kill it. We positioned ourselves and were waiting for the leopard to come down. The cub was constantly watching the lions and when they were dosing off, the leopard came down and quickly ran away.

For us it was time to see if we could photograph another wildebeest crossing at the Mara River and we drove to the area. Soon we saw lots of safari vehicles lined up on both side of the river waiting for a herd of wildebeest to cross. Fortunately on our side were not as many vehicles and we got a good position. Now the wait started. It was about 9:40 in the morning and the wildebeests were standing on the river bank. For them it is dangerous and stressful to cross the river and none of the animals wanted to be the first to go into the river. We were waiting, photographing fighting hippos below us. Finally at 11:40 am the first animal jumped into the water and hundreds followed until something spooked them and they stopped. A few animals got carried away by the strong current and struggled to get ashore. After waiting for another hour, the second group did the crossing. It is amazing to see this show!

Back to the camp for lunch. We went out at 4 in the afternoon for another game drive. Clouds had come up and it started to rain soon. We ran into another pride of lions and started to photograph them in the rain. I told my group to watch for the moment when the lions shake off the water and we got the photos of a male lion with the water flying when he was shaking his head.