I travelled nearly 25,000 miles and took nearly 90,000 pictures, and it only cost me £20,000!
Map of the places where I stayed, including Tarime and Migori airstrips
My trip to Africa came about when I happened to read an online article about a guy who’d managed to wangle himself 365 nights of accommodation in exchange for taking pictures. I thought to myself, “I could do that!”, so I Googled ‘safari lodges in Kenya and Tanzania’, sent off 50 emails and waited to see what happened.
After only a couple of weeks, I had 17 invitations! As the old saying goes, if you don’t ask, you don’t get…
Two of those replies came from &Beyond and Cottar’s, so I should thank them first for giving me the opportunity to spend so much time in the bush. This whole trip wouldn’t have been possible without them, particularly my main contacts Claire and Karen, who had to put up with a steady stream of emails from me over the course of three months!
The deal was that I would take pictures of the wildlife and teach photography to any guests who wanted my help, and, in exchange, I’d get free board and lodging and daily game drives.
&Beyond and Cottar’s would get access to all my pictures for marketing purposes, but it would be on a non-exclusive basis, so I’d also be able to sell them myself.
I stayed four months in Tanzania and Kenya from 28 February to 30 June, and here are a few facts and figures from the trip.
Locations
Itinerary
I have a useful app called Polarsteps that tracks the GPS location of my phone. This map (above) is a screenshot from that app, showing all the places where I stayed and the routes I took on game drives. You can also see Tarime and Migori airstrips, both of which I had to pass through on my way from Tanzania to Kenya.
27-28 February 2019: Flew from London Heathrow via Doha to Kilimanjaro (paying for a business class upgrade on the second leg!)
28 February: Met a few of the &Beyond staff at their office in Arusha and stayed overnight at The Coffee Lodge
1 March: Flew from Arusha to Lobo Airstrip and then was driven to Klein’s Camp
1 March-8 May: Stayed at Klein’s Camp in the Tanzanian Serengeti (with short trips to Serengeti Under Canvas at Ndutu from 11-15 and 22-24 March and at Seronera from 11-16 April)
8 May: Driven to Grumeti Serengeti Tented Camp
8-28 May: Stayed at Grumeti Serengeti Tented Camp in the western Serengeti, Tanzania
28 May: Flew from Grumeti Airstrip to Tarime, then was driven across the Kenyan border to catch another flight from Migori to Keekorok Airstrip in Kenya, where I was met and driven to Cottar’s 1920s Safari Camp
28 May-30 June: Stayed at Cottar’s 1920s Safari Camp
30 June: Flew from Keekorok Airstrip to Nairobi Wilson, where I was picked up by Wilson and taken to the Cottar’s guesthouse and then the Tamarind restaurant for dinner
1 July: Flew just after midnight from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi via Doha to London Heathrow (paying for a business class upgrade on the overnight leg…)
Wildlife sightings
Time spent in camps and lodges: 122 days
Number of game drives: 163
Number of kills: 3 (four male lions killing a female Cape buffalo, two male cheetah killing a blue wildebeest and a female leopard killing a baby blue wildebeest)
Commonest animal seen: impala
Rarest animal seen: pangolin (followed by the rhinoceros)
Animals I’ve seen mating: common ostrich, elephant, leopard, lion (28 times!), Masai giraffe, tawny eagle
Animals I’ve seen nursing: plains zebra, blue wildebeest, lion, cheetah
Animals I’ve seen fighting: blue wildebeest, cheetah, lion, Thomson’s gazelle
Predators I’ve seen hunting: cheetah, leopard, lion, secretary bird, serval
Predators I’ve seen feeding: cheetah, leopard, lion, saddle-billed stork, steppe eagle, tawny eagle
Shutter counts
Tanzania: 82,566 shots (of which 4,117 were 3*, 25 4* and 38 5*)
Kenya: 5,954 shots (of which 765 were 3*, none 4* and five 5*)
Total: 88,520 shots (of which I kept 4,950 that I rated 3* or higher, of which 1,584 were portrait, 3,365 landscape (including panoramas) and 1 square)
Nikon D810 with 80-400mm lens: 36,819 shots
Nikon D850 with 800mm lens: 51,701 shots
Minimum shots taken on a game drive: 0
Maximum shots taken on a game drive: 4,032
Swahili phrases
Hello - Jambo
Thank you very much - Asante sana
Goodnight - Lala salama
How are you? - Habari
No worries - Hakuna matata
Slowly, slowly - Pole, pole
Okay - Sawa sawa
Glossary
Topi are “blue jeans, yellow socks”
Tommies are ‘cheetah fast food’
Warthogs are ‘Kenyan express’
(Male) vervet monkeys are ‘blue balls’
Impala are ‘MacDonald’s’
‘Kick the tyres’ or ‘mark one’s territory’ means to go to the toilet in the bush
An aeroplane is a ‘gas eagle’
Mythbusting
Lionesses don’t do all the hunting.
Hyena are not just scavengers - they’re the principal predators of wildebeest in the Serengeti.
Hunting success rates
Black-footed cat: 60%
Serval: 49%
Leopard: 38%
Cheetah: 33%
Lion: 26%
Quotable quotes
“Can we have gluten-free pizza but no cheese, just sauce?”
“Do you want two shots of gin or three?”
“Binoculate”
“Volcanicity”
“Starter marriage”
“Goats: tails up. Sheep: tails down.”
“I was fucking busy and just sad that it wasn’t the other way around.”
“That’s a man for you: I just want a beer and to see something nekkid.”
Baldness is “a solar panel for a sex machine”
“I can’t even get dressed without a man!”
“Giraffic Park”
“So what you’re saying is, if I gave you a quarter of a million, you’d do something with it?”
“Beans will make you fart like a 40-bob racehorse.”
Staff
The staff were almost without exception very friendly and helpful at all the places where I stayed, but their English names were sometimes a little unusual!
Innocent, Aron, Enoch, Alpha, Thobias and Josphat sounded like they came from a religious cult.
Winter, Justice, Paris and Superstar sounded like they came from the Marvel Cinematic Universe!
Amusing moments
Being asked to take a picture of a Saudi prince and his entourage
Finding a 50kg elephant tusk that would’ve been worth over $35,000 on the black market!
True stories
I obviously heard quite a few stories from the staff while I was out there. Here’s a selection of my favourites (with apologies if I have any of the facts wrong!):
One of the guests at Cottar’s was a New Yorker, and she’d never been in the bush before. At her orientation, the staff warned her that she might hear lions and other animals during the night but that it wasn’t dangerous and she was safe in her tent. Unfortunately, she wasn’t convinced, and that night she panicked at the sound of the lions, called security and had to be airlifted out first thing in the morning!
Leopards are most people’s favourite animals on safari, and it’s easy to forget that they can be very dangerous. One of the guides was Masai and used to tend the livestock with his brother when they were both around six years old. One day, it had started to get very hot, so they decided to have a nap under a tree. When they lay down, the guide’s brother suddenly felt something dripping on him. When he looked up, he saw it was a leopard urinating on him! Before he had a chance to react, the leopard jumped down from the tree, slapped him across the face with its paw - taking out his eye! - and ran off. The two boys both started screaming and crying, and they carried on for over an hour until a passer-by found them. He saw what had happened and told them that Calvin Cottar was camping nearby and might be able to do something. He helped them find the camp, and Calvin managed to get the boy to hospital. He lost the eye, but lived to tell the tale!
Ken is the head guide at Cottar’s, and he’s been around long enough to have had a few hair-raising experiences! One day, he was on a game drive with two women who particularly wanted to see a rhino. He drove them around for hours without any luck until, finally, they saw a rhino standing just a few yards away. Before Ken had a chance to react, the rhino charged the truck, and he had to dive to the other side to save himself. The rhino ended up punching through the door of the truck with his horn, just missing Ken, who was sprawled across the passenger seat. The danger wasn’t over yet, though, because the rhino had got his horn stuck in the door! It pulled and pushed and eventually tore the entire door off its hinges and galloped off! At this point, Ken desperately looked around to find the women, who were thankfully safe, and radioed Kenya Wildlife Service to report the incident. He told them the whole story and then, at the end, said that they might want to look out for a rhino with a door on its head!
There is an old male cat living at Cottar’s called Picky picky, and he ended up scaring quite a few of the guests. It took a while for the staff to work out what was going on after guests kept complaining about animals getting into their tents, but then it became obvious: one man was just getting into bed when Picky Picky jumped down on him. He panicked, screamed and called the security guard. Everyone came running, and he told them that a ‘leopard’ had got into his tent and was still inside somewhere. The staff looked everywhere and eventually found the cat under the bed: it was Picky Picky!
Cottar’s put a water bottle in the bed in each tent during the evening, but that sometimes causes problems when guests aren’t expecting it! One man slid into bed, felt something warm and furry inside and thought it must be some kind of animal, so he grabbed a knife, stabbed the hot water bottle - and ended up getting scalded by the boiling water!
One of the guides at Cottar’s is called Wilson, and he told the story once of how he got his name and birthday. When he was a child, he needed a passport, and he couldn’t get one without a birth certificate, and he couldn’t get one of those without having an English name and a date of birth. Wilson is Masai, and Masai sometimes have names that are difficult for westerners to pronounce, so they often given themselves English names. In Wilson’s case, he was asked to choose a name at school, so he chose James, but James was already taken by one of his classmates. He chose a different name, but that had been taken, too, He chose three more names, but none of them was available either. The first available name was ‘Wilson’, so that’s what he ended up with! The other problem was his date of birth. The Masai don’t celebrate birthdays, so many of them don’t even know how old they are. In the end, he had to speak to a doctor who knew his family. They worked out from the fact his mother was his father’s first wife that it must’ve been 1990-94, so he chose 1994, it was a rainy month so he chose May and he liked the fact that 18 was divisible by six numbers, so he chose the 18th as his birthday!
Strengths & weaknesses
There was nothing too much wrong with any of the places I stayed, but it might be useful to know one or two things about them if you’re thinking of booking a trip.
Klein’s Camp
Strengths: good for seeing elephant, lion and Cape buffalo, great view from the bar area, friendly and helpful staff, breakfast cooked in front of you, ability to go off-road, access to Serengeti National Park, most luxurious accommodation, good souvenir shop
Weaknesses: very few sightings in early March, no rhino, overcooked meat
Serengeti Under Canvas
Strengths: access to Great Migration, so more photographic opportunities than anywhere else, excellent food (especially the soups)
Weaknesses: no electricity or hot water in the tents, bush showers, no off-road driving (although the rule was mainly ignored!), no souvenir shop
Grumeti Serengeti Tented Camp
Strengths: very good soups (the chilled apple and ginger was the best I’d ever tasted!), excellent roads (apart from a few ‘buffalo ribs’), nicely laid out main area on the riverbank, with swimming pool and dining area within easy reach and everywhere having a view of the hippos in the river, beautiful sunsets visible from the Masira Hill, where we generally went for sundowners (and rainbows!)
Weaknesses: no off-road driving (although the rule was again mainly ignored), very few animal sightings before the migration herds arrived, limited souvenir shop
Cottar’s 1920s Safari Camp
Strengths: chance of seeing a rhino, off-road driving allowed in the Olderkesi Conservancy, animals to pet (including a cat called ‘Picky Picky’ and two tame eland), communal dining, best food out of all the places I stayed, old-fashioned Rolls-Royce, good souvenir shop
Weaknesses: no off-road driving in the Masai Mara National Reserve (although the rule was again mainly ignored), very slow and unreliable wifi, long walk to the swimming pool (particularly from the ‘luxury’ tents), having to pay extra for certain spirits
The bill
Flights: £2,000 (including £284 and £343 for online business class upgrades)
Serengeti National Park fees: £2,767 ($3,403)
800mm lens: £15,545
Taxis to/from London Heathrow: £90
Meal at Tamambo Karen Blixen Nairobi: £34
Grand total: £20,436
Forgotten something?
Monopod (I brought the wrong tripod - the one that didn’t turn into a monopod - but I didn’t really need it in the end)
Charging cable for headphones (I brought the wrong one - they all look the same!)
Unnecessary baggage
I could’ve left almost all my clothes and lenses behind. There was a daily laundry service, so most of my shirts just stayed on the shelf, and I only used my 80-400mm and 800mm lenses…
Butcher's bill
1 x left big toenail!
1 x 1.25 teleconverter
1 x laptop screen (damaged in a couple of places when it fell off the nightstand)
1 x pink silk cufflink (the maid must’ve knocked it behind the sink unit in my bathroom…)
Other
Number of unforgettably beautiful women: 2 (you know who you are!)
Species list
This is a cumulative list of species I saw at Klein’s Camp, Serengeti Under Canvas, Grumeti Serengeti Tented Camp and Cottar’s 1920s Safari Camp.
Animals (60)
African civet
African hare
African bush elephant
African wild cat
Banded mongoose
Bat-eared fox
Black-backed jackal
Black-backed/silver-backed jackal
Blue wildebeest
Bohor reedbuck
Bushbuck
Cape buffalo
Chameleon
Cheetah
Coke’s hartebeest
Colobus monkey
Common warthog
Common/golden jackal
Defassa waterbuck
Dung beetle
Dwarf mongoose
Eland
Field mouse
Grant’s gazelle
Green turtle
Hippopotamus
Impala
Kirk’s dik-dik
Klipspringer
Leopard
Leopard tortoise
Lesser bush baby
Lion
Little antelope
Masai giraffe
Millipede
Monitor lizard
Mwanza flat-headed rock agama/Spider-Man agama
Nile crocodile
Olive baboon
Oribi
Pangolin
Plains zebra
Rhinoceros
Rock hyrax
Rock python
Scrub hare
Serval
Slender mongoose
Spitting cobra
Spotted hyena
Steenbok
Terrapin
Thomson’s gazelle
Topi
Tree hyrax
Tree lizard
Vervet monkey
White-tailed mongoose
Wild dog/painted wolf
Birds (208)
Abdim’s stork
African crowned eagle
African cuckoo
African fish eagle
African golden weaver
African green-pigeon
African grey flycatcher
African grey hornbill
African harrier-hawk
African hawk-eagle
African hoopoe
African moustached warbler
African open-billed stork
African paradise flycatcher
African pied wagtail
African wattled lapwing
African white-backed vulture
Arrow-marked babbler
Augur buzzard
Bare-faced go-away-bird
Barn swallow
Bateleur eagle
Bearded woodpecker
Black crake
Black stork
Black-and-white cuckoo
Black-bellied bustard
Black-chested snake-eagle
Black-headed gonolek
Black-headed heron
Black-lored babbler
Black-shouldered kite
Black-winged red bishop
Black-winged stilt
Blacksmith plover
Blue-capped cordon-bleu
Blue-naped mousebird
Bronze mannikin
Brown parrot
Brown snake-eagle
Burchell’s starling
Cape wheatear
Cardinal quelea
Cardinal woodpecker
Cattle egret
Chestnut sparrow
Cinnamon-breasted rock bunting
Common buzzard
Common kestrel
Common ostrich
Common sandpiper
Coqui francolin
Croaking cisticola
Crowned plover
Dark chanting-goshawk
Diederik cuckoo
Eagle owl
Eastern chanting-goshawk
Eastern grey plantain-eater
Eastern paradise whydah
Egyptian goose
European bee-eater
European roller
European swallow
Fischer’s lovebird
Fischer’s sparrow-lark
Flappet lark
Fork-tailed drongo
Gabor goshawk
Goliath heron
Grassland pipit
Great spotted cuckoo
Greater blue-eared starling
Greater flamingo
Greater painted-snipe
Greater striped swallow
Green wood-hoopoe
Grey-breasted spurfowl
Grey-capped social weaver
Grey crowned crane
Grey heron
Grey hornbill
Grey kestrel
Grey-backed fiscal
Grey-breasted spurfowl
Grey-crested helmetshrike
Hadada ibis
Hammerkop
Harlequin quail
Helmeted guineafowl
Hooded vulture
Isabelline wheatear
Kittlitz’s plover
Klaas’s cuckoo
Knob-billed duck
Kori bustard
Lappet-faced vulture
Lesser flamingo
Lesser kestrel
Lesser masked weaver
Lesser striped swallow
Lilac-breasted roller
Little bee-eater
Little sparrowhawk
Little green bee-eater
Long-crested eagle
Long-tailed cisticola
Magpie shrike
Marigold sunbird
Marsh eagle
Martial eagle
Montagu’s harrier
Mountain buzzard
Northern anteater chat
Northern wheatear
Northern white-crowned shrike
Pale spotted owlet
Pallid harrier
Pied kingfisher
Pin-tailed whydah
Plain-backed pipit
Purple grenadier
Purple-crested turaco
Pygmy falcon
Pygmy kingfisher
Rattling cisticola
Red-backed shrike
Red-billed buffalo-weaver
Red-billed quelea
Red-cheeked cordon-bleu
Red-fronted barbet
Red-headed weaver
Red-necked spurfowl
Red-rumped swallow
Red-winged lark
Red-winged starling
Ring-necked dove
Rosy-breasted longclaw
Ruff
Rufous-naped lark
Rufous-tailed weaver
Ruppell’s griffon vulture
Ruppell’s long-tailed starling
Saddle-billed stork
Sand grouse
Sand martin
Scarlet-chested sunbird
Secretary bird
Senegal lapwing
Silverbird
Sooty falcon
Southern red bishop
Speckle-fronted weaver
Speckled mousebird
Speckled pigeon
Spot-flanked barbet
Spotted thick-knee
Spur-winged goose
Spur-winged lapwing
Steel-blue whydah
Steppe eagle
Straw-tailed whydah
Striated heron
Striped kingfisher
Sunbird
Superb starling
Swamp nightjar
Taita fiscal
Tawny eagle
Tawny-flanked prinia
Temminck’s courser
Three-banded plover
Two-banded courser
Two-banded plover
Usambiro barbet
Variable sunbird
Verreaux’s (or black) eagle
Verreaux’s eagle-owl
Village indigobird
Von Der Decken’s hornbill
Water thick-knee
Wattled starling
Western banded snake-eagle
White stork
White wagtail
White-bellied bustard
White-bellied tit
White-browed coucal
White-browed robin-chat
White-browed scrub-robin
White-faced whistling-duck
White-headed buffalo-weaver
White-headed saw-wing
White-headed vulture
White-winged widowbird
Wire-tailed swallow
Wood dove
Wood sandpiper
Woodland kingfisher
Woolly-necked stork
Yellow-billed oxpecker
Yellow-billed stork
Yellow-fronted canary
Yellow-rumped seedeater
Yellow-throated longclaw
Yellow-throated sandgrouse
Yellow-vented bulbul
Zitting cisticola
If you’d like to order a framed print of one of my wildlife photographs, please visit the Prints page.
If you’d like to book a lesson or order an online photography course, please visit my Lessons and Courses pages.