Tanzania: a self-drive safari opens up the wild world of the Serengeti

From big cats to baboons, a self-drive safari in a 4x4 opens up the wild world of the Serengeti. Rosamund Urwin goes for a spin in Tanzania
Rosamund Urwin19 May 2016

A metre from my car window, a grouchy-faced olive baboon is sitting in the rain. As I reach for my camera in that perfunctory, touristy way,

I realise the baboon is clutching a bundle to her chest: a tiny infant she’s keeping dry. While I’m fussing around with the zoom, Mama Baboon gets up, turns and shows her cerise bottom to me. It is one of many reminders of who’s really in charge in the Serengeti.

I’m handling a beast of my own, though: a new Land Rover Discovery as bright white as the teeth of a Hollywood starlet. My vehicle is part of a small fleet of 4x4s driving on their intended terrain (Tanzanian shrubland) rather than ferrying little Portia and Edwin around west London. The trip is a collaboration between the car-maker and Abercrombie & Kent, the travel company which has been sending the well-heeled to the wilds since 1962. It’s self-drive but guided by radio —meaning you get out of the back seat and behind the wheel but without sacrificing the superior animal-spotting skills of a guide who has trained for years (our expert is Phillip, who grew up in the Maasai tribe).

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The Land Rover is a forgiving car. If you lose control, it takes over. And it is certainly an attraction in its own right: almost as soon as we leave the Arusha Coffee Lodge, where we’ve spent our first night, we’ve been pulled over by the police — not because we’re speeding (though this provokes a panicked check of the limit) but so that the officer can walk around the car admiringly. He isn’t alone: even the young Maasai boys hear the purring of our engines and are briefly distracted from shepherding goats to gawp at the car. To be fair to them, it does have superpowers. With our guide Glen barking instructions at me — I imagine him as Luis Moya to my Carlos Sainz — I manage to get the vehicle up on a boulder. Getting it down, of course, is an even tougher challenge. The car realises I’m not up to the job, and takes over the steering.

We cover around 500 miles in four days — joy-riding, in the literal sense. I hardly drive in London but here I find myself coming over all Clarkson — hitting the accelerator with delight. You don’t need any experience beyond a driver’s licence to do it.

The key to being off-road, I soon realise, is not only to listen carefully to the radio but to copy exactly what the lead car does. This approach has its rewards: I manage to drive through a boggy section and go off into some “kopjes” (mini-hills) in search of cheetahs, while another car gets stuck in the mud. We have to abandon our pursuit of the big cats so that they can get dragged out.

The wildlife is what I’m here to see, though — and it doesn’t disappoint. During an early morning balloon safari we see a cheetah chase its prey — a wild hare — across the plains. Later in the day, back in our cars, we find a lake of flatulent hippos who bare their teeth as they fight each other for a little more space in the waterhole. We drive up close to a pride of lions that stays sitting above us, indifferent to our presence, as though we’re the subjects paying our respects and they’re the royals. The brutality of nature is exposed too: we find an elephant calf wandering on its own and spot the inevitable a minute later — vultures pecking at its mother’s vast carcass in the grass. Glen tells us the orphan will become a meal for the hyenas within days.

Fascinating creature: keep your eyes peeled for cheetahs 
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But perhaps the most impressive sight is the great wildebeest migration, which arrives in the southern Serengeti roughly from January to April and the northern Serengeti from August to October, heading south again in November and December. Hundreds of thousands of wildebeest, with some zebras and gazelles tagging along for the ride, move annually in a fairly predictable pattern in a bid to find better ground for grazing and fresh water. Glen tells us that the ones at the end of the queue get ill as they’re eating where the others have defecated; some are lost along the way, but if they survive they rejoin the herd.

The wildebeest may not have the beauty of some of the Serengeti’s other beasts but they compensate in numbers. We find them just before dusk. It’s drizzling. I try to tally the silhouettes but it’s as tricky as crowd-counting: they’ve everywhere — snorting and digging at the soil with their hooves. The herd is walking initially but then one gets spooked and starts to run. Soon they’re all thundering away from us, kicking up dust, a diminuendoing rumble their legacy.

Follow the leader: zebra crossing

The wild we watch during our days is diametrically opposed to the luxury in which we spend our nights. Though, technically, we stay in two campsites — the Sanctuary Ngorongoro Crater Camp and the Sanctuary Serengeti Migration Camp — even “glamping” doesn’t do justice to the tents here, which are rebuilt for you in the different locations. There’s a proper double bed (with mosquito net), electricity and a flushing loo. You can even have a hot shower: as you wash, your “butler” is busily hoisting buckets outside. The staff greet you with warm towels and fruit G&Ts on your arrival back to camp.

The camp has a mini-library, a bar and a dining area, though at night you eat by candlelight outside. Returning to my tent after a filling three-course meal and a few glasses of wine, I notice dozens of pairs of eyes staring at me from the trees; luckily they belong to some (rather adorable) bushbabies. But as night draws on, nature’s presence becomes more sinister — I hear the calls of the wild: the lion’s growl, the hyena’s cackle.

Alamy

This is adventure at its most luxurious. The only problem being that after careering around the bush in a car with super-powers, driving around London must seem even more mundane.

Details: Tanzania

Abercrombie & Kent (01242 547898, abercrombiekent.co.uk/landrover) offers a number of Land Rover itineraries in 2016 and 2017 (the Tanzania itinerary reviewed above is currently unavailable). Prices start at £3,395pp for a three-night itinerary including accommodation and ground arrangements, but not flights. A&K also offers a range of guided safaris in Tanzania.

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