Why would we want to go to Kenya during April in middle of the long rains season? We can expect heavy downpours of rain that time of the year and the grass is high so it is not going to be that easy to spot animals. 

It may well be because I am not a very social person and a lion in the Masai Mara in July or August with twenty+ cars surrounding it may not fit my definition of a true wildlife wilderness experience. Masai Mara is not even included into our itinerary for this upcoming trip. Do not get me wrong the Masai Mara is a great national park and during our first Kenya trip in 2011 we saw the big five in a single day. We were also very lucky to be there on the first day when the wildebeest actually started crossing the Mara river.

On our third day ever in sub-Saharan Africa the highlights on any safari tick list (big five, cheetahs, the big migration) had been completed.  Not that we had such a list in the first place but after having crossed off the obligatory “must see” we were ready to move to the next stage of “want do’s” to explore Africa in more depth and at its own pace.

Ethiopia is such a beautiful country and as we are going back to Ethiopia in August 2013 to visit the tribes of the Omo valley I would have loved to cross the Ethiopia-Kenya border and travel through northern-Kenya but we skipped that idea as we felt that the area on the Kenyan side around lake Turkana was not safe enough especially as we travel with children.

With having been only five days in Kenya so far there is so much more to explore. We will still travel up north and cross the Equator but only as far north as Samburu game reserve which will be the main focus of this trip. Perhaps we get the opportunity to visit some villages in the area to get a glimpse of the culture of the Samburu and Turkana tribes. 

So why Kenya in the wet season? I do have a passion for photography and while a sleeping lion under a clear blue sky remains nice to see, photographing animals in the rain or under clouds may add an additional element of drama.

Even some clouds may be sufficient as evidenced by the world press photo in the link . http://www.worldpressphoto.org/photo/2012-brent-stirton-nas1-kl Not that I have any such far reaching ambitions and if the sun shines during the entire trip we won’t be unhappy either. Nothing is predictible on any African trip and that is just the beauty of it.