{"id":25,"date":"2022-02-11T21:48:37","date_gmt":"2022-02-11T21:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.irissrin.com\/blog\/?p=25"},"modified":"2022-04-26T12:17:47","modified_gmt":"2022-04-26T12:17:47","slug":"safari-to-kenya-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irissrin.com\/blog\/safari-to-kenya-planning\/","title":{"rendered":"Safari to Kenya – Planning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Safari!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The word evokes images of the Savannah.  Elephants grazing on the plentiful vegetation.  Lion cubs frolicking with their siblings under the watchful eyes of their mothers.  Massive herds of Zebra and Wildebeest on their annual migration, making the perilous crossing over the Mara River, where the Crocodiles await their annual feast! The cackle of Hyenas and the rasp of Vultures jockeying for position on a (mostly eaten) kill.  Gazelles, kudus and buffaloes grazing on the expansive grasslands keeping an eye out for predators.  Hippos wallowing in the rivers, waterholes and lakes, then heading out to land for their evening munchies!  Giraffes eating the leaves off the Acacia and Mimosa trees that dot the landscape.  A Flamboyance of Flamingos feeding on lake dwelling insects and shrimp (I learned recently that Flamingos are born white-gray and turn pink due to their diet!). A lone Cheetah sitting on a rock intently surveying the landscape.  An ecosystem filled with life, yet under constant pressure from human settlement, not to mention poaching which continues to be a serious problem in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A tidbit I picked up while researching this trip: In Swahili, the word Safari means a \u201cjourney\u201d and it is derived from the Arabic noun safar<\/strong>.  Interestingly, the word
safar<\/strong> in Hindi means journey <\/strong>or travel<\/strong> and is likely derived from Arabic.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Why a Safari, and why now? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reasons are straight-forward. As some of you may know, I took a voluntary buyout (VBO) from Fidelity Investments<\/a> in 2021 after working there for a shade under 29 years.  My last day at work was Friday, December 31, 2021.  I fully intended to spend the first 2 quarters of 2022 travelling, and scratching items off my lengthy bucket-list while simultaneously scratching my travel itch!  But then the Omicron variant of Covid-19 took hold and has run rampant over the last couple of months.  This threw off my schedule, but I can be pretty determined at times (more stubborn than anything else, I suppose)!  So, armed with Excel and statistical data from the World Health Organization\u2019s Covid Dashboard<\/a>, I started tracking trends for countries on my bucket list, looking for opportunities to travel safely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Part of the problem was to find countries that were admitting tourists; many shut down at a week\u2019s notice, even to their own citizens in some cases.  Early on, my \u201cplans\u201d to visit Japan and the Far East fell through when Japan didn\u2019t want to issue visas.  Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the Middle East were hit badly with Omicron, and Israel began to permit only essential travel.  Originally, my plan was to go on Safari after<\/em><\/strong> visiting the Middle East, but thankfully, a review of the data clearly showed that Kenya recovered from Omicron early in February 2022. Based on the data and with Kenya remaining open to visitors, a Safari seemed by far the safest activity possible, despite tepid vaccination rates in East Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I am making this sound so cut-and-dry, but it is not at all like that!  In the early-1980s in Dehradun<\/a> (Uttarakhand, India), my sister and I grew up on a steady diet of books by the likes of Salim Ali, Jim Corbett, Kenneth Anderson and Joy Adamson. We got into birding and shared nature rambles through the Forest Research Institute (FRI) as Appa was posted to the Indian Military Academy which fortuitously was adjacent to the FRI.  I think that\u2019s probably where our love for nature really began.  Unfortunately, since I started working in 1989, I haven\u2019t spent any time continuing to kindle this particular interest.  But a Safari has perennially been in the top-5 on my bucket list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Even then, I might not have pulled the trigger (oops \u2013 poor choice of words for a Safari focused blog!) except for a serendipitous conversation with Shekhar, a close friend, who told me of a friend of his from \u201cB-school\u201d who left his day-job in the Telecom industry and now owned a Safari camp on a wildlife conservancy just outside of Maasai Mara National Reserve<\/a> in Kenya.  This prompted me to get going on the detailed planning, and I am super-excited to share that this Safari is really happening, barring any last-minute surprises!  Iris and I are off to Kenya in early March for a 12-day Safari (16 days, if you count travel days, and time spent in Nairobi).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It has been three frenetic weeks of \u201cwork\u201d to make this trip of a lifetime a reality.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This included reading books on Safari planning focused on Kenya, watching videos on YouTube to understand what we could expect, putting together an itinerary based on what we wanted to see, deciding on tented camps vs lodges, working out the logistics of travelling within Kenya with Shekhar\u2019s friend (a mix of Air and Land), deciding what gear to buy and shopping for it \u2013clothing, boots, insect repellent, camera and lenses, bags (you can\u2019t carry suitcases on the small Cessna Caravan C208B\u2019s that transport you from Nairobi to the bush camps all over Kenya), packing cubes, rain gear and what-nots \u2013 getting visas (thankfully, there\u2019s an e-visa option \u2013 so you can do everything on-line) and numerous other things I am missing.\u00a0 At any rate, here\u2019s an outline of our plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n