It was an extremely exciting day as I was living my dream of visiting Africa safari. The very idea of ​​experiencing National Geographic and Discovery channels live was exciting to the core.

The first day was game drive and safari in Tarangire National Park, located 120 km southwest of Arusha city. It took us 3 hours to get to the park where the last 5km were roadless, probably getting visitors used to the fact that there were no roads inside the park. The guide did all the documentation work for us to enter the park facilities.

On the way we had crossed the Arusha airport that seemed more like a private airport due to its size and proximity to the road with folding vehicles. We also passed through a large open expanse of grassland and occasional trees. It was drizzling a bit saturating the ambient colors. The road had many steep ups and downs, but the powerful safari vehicles had no trouble navigating these terrains. Arriving inside the park, our guide gave us simple instructions:

• Do not feed the animals
• not the garbage
• Do not get out of the vehicle at any time as walking is not allowed

At all times inside the park one has to stay in the safari vehicle. We arrived at the park at 10am with packed lunches. It is a regular way of going on safari with picnic lunches to ensure you spend the whole day on safari without returning to lodges/camps for meals. The driver and guide is a trained staff that must take care of several things in addition to driving and spotting animals.

Some of the details of the national park that he shared were:

1. Tarangire is national park gazette number 197.
2. It is in an area of ​​2580 square kilometers.
3. The park derives its name from the Tarangire River that flows within.
4. The word Tarangire means wild boar river due to the large population of wild boar in this park.

Each national park has something unique, baobab trees and tusked elephants for Tarangire. The tusks of these elephants are huge and their population numbers are also huge within this park.

Once instructions and information were shared and it was rarer to enter, the guide opened the entire roof for the best possible viewing. The windows are big enough to see through, but can sometimes limit the view of the landscape. Once the roof was up it was just beautiful with great open meadows and eyes on the lookout for wildlife sightings. Driving another 500 meters and we were officially within the boundaries of Tarangire National Park. There were only mud roads, but the ride still didn’t feel bumpy. The first thing we saw was a termite mound. Termites and other ants are an extremely important part of the ecosystem and the best cleaners on planet earth. They travel in armies and make sure that after a kill there is nothing left to age or pollute the environment.

There was open grassland along with trees which also included the unique Baobab tree. It is a hollow tree with a wide trunk with small branches and few leaves. It is also jokingly referred to as if the tree was planted upside down with its roots visible instead of the actual branches. This tree has natural holes inside its trunk for poachers to hide and animals to rest. The first animal visible was a giraffe quietly grazing on a yellow-barked acacia, which is an extremely long thorny tree and also a favorite of giraffes. The tongue twists in one direction to avoid punctures from the tree and is then swallowed by the animal. The female giraffe can be identified by having visible hair on the horn of her head. The male species do not have hair that exposes the bare horns.

We were driving and spotted water males in the Tarangire River. They were small in number with multiple groups and enjoying the water around them. We were able to see 2 of them testing the strength of their horns. The open roof provides a good wide angle view of the park and game landscape. There were also some ostriches on the side of the road grazing on the grass. The males are black while the females are gray. It was very interesting to learn all these minute random details from our guide about different species.

We seemed to be the only ones driving, but saw another safari vehicle stopped at a bend in the road. This is usually an indication of a sighting or expected wildlife activity. Our vehicle approached and saw a giant tusk near a baobab tree. It moved and the vehicles closed in on it to see the great fangs. I have also seen Asian elephants and could easily tell the difference from their African counterpart with larger ears and larger tusks. He was playing with a tree and soothing the itching on his body. It seemed to have had a mud bath with red dirt shining all over its large body. We stayed there for some time photographing the animal from different angles and observing its activities. After a few moments, he slipped into the trees and all of us lose our sight.

The next animal to be seen was the gazelle, which was also by the roadside grazing fresh grass after the monsoon season. They are hunted by carnivores in abundance. It is a deer-like animal with shiny golden silky fur and a black stripe to distinguish between a female and a male. One of them jumped and would have easily been a few meters away.

Maneuvering further into the park we saw a family of warthogs crossing the road with the young completely shielded from us. Herbivorous animals with false tusks intended only for defense. These animals are found in abundance here and give the river and this national park its name. They have to kneel down to feed on grass due to their long legs.

We continue driving around the playground and arrive at the picnic site. Each park has a dedicated secure picnic site where visitors can use sparkling clean restroom facilities, seating arrangements for packed lunches. We get out of the vehicle and walk to feel the surroundings with lunch being the last priority. We decided to skip lunch at this point and explored the area that looked like a hilltop region overlooking the river and larger scenery in front of us. There were many superb starlings at the site and they seemed extremely friendly. I was trying to shoot one from a distance and realized another had literally climbed on my shoe and another on my back. It was very nice to see myself surrounded by birds of such beautiful colors and to feel the closeness to nature.

After a 20-minute stop, we got back in the car to continue the action. As we descended we saw many rock hyraxes. I was seeing and hearing them for the first time and their appearance points to them being larger versions of the mouse. They have another species of tree hyrax that is found only in trees. We were able to see a whole community and several families leaning on rocks. They were quick to climb rocks and hide inside them.

The guide now started to drive towards the exit of the park (same as the entrance) as we had planned to cover Manyara national park also on the same day. On the way back we saw a martial eagle with its yellow eyes and a small crest on its head perched on one of the branches of a leafless tree. You could tell how arrogantly he was sitting on top of it, giving her an excellent position to look out over the park. Up ahead, in a tree, we saw griffon vultures, which can be seen in abundance during a hunt. They are also cleaners of the environment with their gathering abilities. The beaks of these two birds are pointed and needle-like to tear any meat attached to the bones. The martial eagle is also responsible for opening the corpse.

On some trees we notice a tied blue cloth that is used to collect or kill the Tse Tse fly, whose bite can cause sleeping sickness. These flies look like large houseflies and attack both humans and animals. It was again very interesting to hear all this unique information and get a closer understanding of mother nature that we don’t even pay attention to, leading our hectic city life.

Now we had arrived at the park entry/exit checkpoint to deliver the final exit documentation documents. Probably 5km further on we stopped at a local Maasai market area to have our packed lunches. Lunch was full of red meat and I had to survive only on fruit which was also packed thankfully. It had started to rain by this time and we were experiencing all the weather in one day. The place was a small hut with chairs made of goatskin. I was surprised to see the complete goat skin with hair still attached and curiously used as a cushion to sit on the chair. During our meal, many local people came to sell locally handmade beaded garlands and other artisan items. We skipped shopping and started our journey to Manyara National Park.

At all times I felt very comfortable with the poufs that we had personalized for our safaris. I had searched and read a lot on the web to find the one with the right design and shape. I was quite pleased with the results and even happier when the use seemed perfect on those vehicles.

Photos of this national park can be found here.