Serengeti Lamai

The most commonly associated aspect of the serious visitor to the Masai Mara is the vehicle traffic. Unless you know where specifically to go to or go out of season you will encounter vehicle traffic in the Masai Mara like no other wildlife place in Africa.

What may people don’t realise though, is just south of the border lies the Serengeti. Also just south of the border, the Mara River turns to an east-west direction before flowing into Lake Victoria. The wildebeest come up from the south before entering into the Mara and it is here where some of the largest crossings take place. Tanzanian parks have designated this part of the Serengeti a Low impact area- with only a handful of camps allowed in the area. Thus it was with two intrepid clients that myself through C4 Images and Safaris planned a weeklong trip into the Lamai area to witness and photograph the migration. 6 days later and a few hundreds and thousands of animals later, we were satiated.

The Lamai is a remote wilderness just south of the Mara. I could see all the landmarks and at times the vehicles too. But we were removed in our own little world of animal sightings and photography. It was bliss beyond belief.

Of course with the migration came the predators and we watched cheetahs hunting and killing and lions a mating and fighting. It showcased just how good a wilderness concept can be when my clients proclaimed, “This is exactly how we envisioned Africa” after lions mated on an open plain with no one else in sight… Lamai was and is a very special place in one of the most productive ecosystems in Africa. Long may it remain as such.