The fifth day of our tour is completely immersed in wonder.
We arrived yesterday afternoon in the Mara North Conservancy, a jewel set not many miles from Tanzania and overlooking the Mara River, but outside the most "touristy" reserve.
It is not only this, of course, the attraction: in this protected and sustainable paradise you can feel the harmony that reigns between the local communities and Nature.
It is the Maasai themselves who explain to you that animals are respected and even felines, traditionally enemies of shepherds for obvious reasons, are no longer killed because those who lose cattle will be rewarded with the proceeds of tourism and activities related to conservancy.
Wandering around the tracks that pass indifferently through small villages or fenced houses and woods full of herbivores with lions lurking, dribbling herds of wildebeest that raise dust or families of suspicious buffaloes, makes a certain effect.
But the scene just before sunset is taken by the landscape: the intense yellow of the earth that was burned in the sixties after an epidemic of fever of the same color, and the purple of the sky, separated by at least three shades of green. All fatally scripted in an immense depth.
A lion and his companion mate not more than two meters away from us, a lioness a few kilometers away is carrying a cub of zebra just killed, beware of hyenas.
The Kingdom of the Animals always catches the attention, but this time it is almost impossible to separate it from the enchantment of this place where we are the only automatched beings within miles.
In the evening a freezing temperature drops, mindful also of the previous rainy days. The Saruni Mara of our Italian friend Riccardo Orizio who hosts us (we talk about it extensively in another article) warms us in every possible way, including the artisan one and a good bottle of red wine.
Zebre, Eland and Topi (no...don't be horrified, the Topi del Mara is a herbivore of the hartebeest family) come to eat under our suite and accompany us with their discreet ruminating in a fantastic sleep, lulled by the songs of nocturnal birds and the sound of the mid-mountain wind.
At dawn we are ready for a comprehensive safari in the Mara North and the other two nearby conservancies, Lemek and Olchorro. Our guide Sinya tells us about the genesis of these gems to protect and how the maasai's awareness of respecting Nature and animals as a resource to improve their living conditions without losing their identity and selling out their culture and traditions has grown. In the middle of very interesting speeches we stop every now and then to witness a zebra flight chased by the leopard, a fight between male antelopes, the meditation of a Buddhist giraffe and the buffalo grooming with egrets. We would like to be able to stay here at least a month, to learn and visit the communities, which will not be possible in the Covid-19 period.
And it is a real shame, because this is the most "human" safari we have ever done.