I have waited a long time and I don't think I will become wiser in the way of being able to say how I feel, so here goes.
Note that Serengeti is the giant national park over the savannah, in northern Tanzania and southern Kenya. Ngorongoro is the magic land before time crater that the elephants discovered the pathways to which is the animal paradise, small but full. South Luangwe is in Zambia, on the Luangwe river on the most hippo infested stretch of river in Africa. Together they were everywhere we did game drives.
I will try to go through it by animal, to try to say what was there.
Wildebeasts: We came in the middle of the wildebeast migration. The migration starts at the southern tip of the national park, where we were. It works its way up to Masai Mara, crossing the famous river at some point on the way, then looping back down. If it's a circle, Kisamo said, why do we say it starts here? It is because life starts here, this is where they come to breed, and then begin again. It was not technically a game drive, but we saw so much going in, zebras and antelopes grazing on the side, buffalo and elephants in the distance, giraffes strolling across the plains, following each other's leads, the eponymous wildebeasts, and of course your friendly neighborhood road baboons, that it felt like a game drive. Then as we were cruising through the late afternoon, deep in the national park now, the migration crossed the road. Right in front of us, and we saw the head of the herd break across the open ground. Then of course the herd followed, each beast follows the one in front of it, mindless in their millions. You could see the S bend of their progression far back, and the great mass of them in the distance. They did not start running except in turn. and when their turn came they ran in a group. They had calves with them, more easily startled, rushing to keep up, because this is where the circle starts, at birth. We watched and watched and then the car in front of us revved through and the progression bent then broke. And then we watched more until we did the same, the millions still coming but now the beginning of the herd as unknowable as the end.
We were passed by the migration again on the second day. Here they encircled us entirely, in their confusion we split the herd, and they ran back and around and then continued and we could watch them on all sides.
Wildebeasts are not on their own lovely or impressive, they are a dumb herd animal, a glorified cow, but to see them run on their spindly legs at an impossible angle, and then to see the hundreds, thousands more thousands scatter and kick up the dust, convinced with the power of groupthink of the rightness of their actions, was a magnificent thing.
Antelope: We saw a number of different species of antelope and gazelles, Grant's gazelles and thompson's and kudus, and the tiny dikdiks, waterbucks I will not remember all of them, but I will remember.
The dikdik was the size of a large cat and moved its nose in a circle, scenting the confusing odors of us. It had frozen to become invisible in plain sight.
Mostly the gazelles hung out together in mixed grazing herds, the more common ones proliferating. The Grants can go mostly without water by getting their water from the grass. They move like deer but smaller on average and more delicate.
The gazelles have a social group literally called a harem, a group of females and children, one male who mates with whoever there. They were most interesting in South Luangwe. By the trick of moving through space and time, it was mating season when we got there. The antelope were therefore going nuts, head butting the ditches in the road and the bushes. At this critical time, a male rarely remains with the herd for a week, so there are constant contests and constant attempts to prove themselves. My overriding impression of them was the urge to watch them move, leap, act out, the certainty of their ability to create delicate magic.
Zebras: While talking about South Luangwe, I should mention it was also mating season there for zebras, and we saw two fight, in a one on one wrestling match that sent one skittering away in the end, and graduated to a bit of rearing and biting.
Zebras like the others I have talked about so far, are incredibly populous, on the roadside to the extent of mostly driving by them as they grazed calmly. In Serengeti they shied from the cars, but in Ngorongoro, they didn't bother.
Up north in those two it was no longer mating season, in fact there were foals, who would position themselves behind their mothers.
Each zebra has its own stripes, like a fingerprint, and you believe this watching them, their patternings each worth looking at as an individual beauty. And they have the beauty of horses, and their frisking energy. You would come upon them grazing mostly, but also jogging to and fro, or rolling in the dust. or resting.
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