In the Maara

A while back, I was asked to make a photo series on human experiences for my college magazine. At the time I was in Kenya, and thought it was the perfect time to come up with something interesting.

And so I made Wild Sins. But when I published it, a lot of photographs from my trip didn’t make the cut, obviously – because it was such a specific theme. Here are my top picks from my trip to Kenya.

As someone who is part of family that loves and has had its fair share of holidays, I can confidently say that Kenya has been my favourite one so far. We knew that a holiday like this needed a lot of planning and wasn’t cheap, so we’d put it off for a while.

A safari based holiday like this, especially one like ours where you’re trying to cover many places in the country and not just Masai Mara which is the most popular destination for safaris and sightings requires a lot of time too. You need to be able to take out at least 10 days to do justice to a holiday like this, and that’s the bare minimum.

It’s always a task in my family to plan a holiday because we need to chalk out 3 schedules: my sister’s, father’s and mine. Then it’s about finding that little window wherein the 3 of us have holidays. Luckily, we managed to find our window and set out for a great trip!

Here are some my top picks from Kenya:

Although we went to Maara before the migration period began, we were lucky enough to see some early signs of the phenomenon. On one of our safaris, we came across a few hundred zebras walking in a surprisingly ordered fashion all the way from Tanzania! (Fun fact: a group of zebras is called a dazzle)

You can distinguish the different species of Giraffes with the kind of patterns they have. This one here is the reticulated giraffe.

Elephants are the lovely creatures you’ll end up seeing at every reserve you go to, and the truth is they’ll never bore you. I think the sheer size of these creatures will never cease to amaze me. There’s a reason Masai Mara is the most popular reserve in Kenya. At most places we’d struggle to find even a single lion around. But here, we’d just find them chilling by the side of the road!

Now there’s many birds in Kenya, but I promise you that by the end of your trip you can’t not know the Superb Sterling. This is one brave bird because