Murchison Falls

I headed up to Murchison Falls National Park this past weekend. My first safari. It was beautiful, and I finally got to see the legendary African animals in the wild (not to mention the legendary Nile River), but the whole experience was a tad too sterile for my liking. Everything was guided and organized, you can’t step out of the car, and you can’t get away from all the other safari cars with armies of tourists poking their cameras out the window, gratuitously snapping away. The animals even seem to have become accustomed to the vehicles. I suppose I’m more into wandering around on one’s own, interacting personally with nature or people.

That said, it was worth it. My favourite was seeing a giraffe run – so graceful and deliberate, it actually looks like you are watching it in slow-motion. Second was hearing a hippo outside my tent in the middle of the night munching grass and flapping his ears. They trek far from the water to find soft, short grass, and are frequent visitors at the campground. But their rotund, jolly appearance belies the fact that they are vicious and territorial, known to charge tourists (and can run faster than any man). So I had to desperately hold it in until the hippo lumbered away.

Wildlife roll-call: baboons, guinea fowl, colobus monkeys, water bucks, buffalo (and their ubiquitous bird-on-the-shoulder sidekicks), all manner of antelopes (obiri, kop, etc. and a tiny, dog-sized one that is apparently the rarest animal in the park), a pride of lions with 9 cubs play-wrestling, giraffes, elephants, hippos, crocodiles, birds galore, warthogs, and a couple insane Australian girls who talked about drinking the whole trip up, drank the whole time, and complained about their hangover the whole way back.

Photos (though not of the Aussies – also very territorial):