On August 1, 2006, my mother, myself, Marc-Antoine and my brother Amar, embarked on an enthralling adventure. We went on a 10-day safari that started in the charming town of Moshi (Smoke in Swahili) in Northern Tanzania and continued through Tarangire National Park, home of giant baobab trees and elephants, to the edge of the wild, westerly Lake Eyasi, land of the hunter-gatherer Hadzabe people.
On we went to two of the best-known wildlife parks in the world — Serengeti and Ngorongoro. Enclosed within the Ngorongoro region is Olduvai Gorge — one of the birthplaces of humanity — where Richard Leakey and his associates found evidence of the early hominid ancestors of homo sapiens, as well as early humans, who appeared 50,000 years ago, walking straight and tall on the floor of the Gorge.
Then to the forested Lake Manyara National Park and northwards through arid country towards the beautiful, conical, active volcano, Ol Doinyo Lengai (Mountain of God, for the Maasai). Here we visited Engaruka — a 500 year-old, advanced, agricultural settlement, which was mysteriously abandoned by its inhabitants in the 1700s.
Our last halt was a modern Maasai village. We even had a glorious, if brief, glimpse (darshan) of Mount Kilimanjaro, from the Moshi-Dar bus. All in all it was a "blessed" safari.
