We started the day with a game drive at dawn, and closed the day with a night drive that finished about 10pm. The staff at these camps work so hard— up before dawn to bring coffee to the tents as a wake up call, packing breakfasts into the trucks before a 6:30 departure, and then on the other end staying up to serve late dinners to night drive participants and escort them to the tents afterwards.
We didn’t see a lot of new species today, but we did get to watch some great interaction behaviors. A large herd of elephants was mud bathing at the side of the river, having a great time. As we watched, we realized that there was a tiny trunk peeking out of the muddy water — one of the smallest elephants was nearly submerged amidst his enormous aunts and uncles. When the elephants emerged to cross the river and enter the woods, this same baby scampered ahead… only to fall down in the dirt and pull another baby down with him for a dirt wrestling match. Eventually the whole family did manage to disappear into the woodland.
We also caught up with yesterdays lion pride. About ten of the females and cubs were sleeping in ( yes, in the tree) and around a large tamarind tree. Based on the size of their bellies, the hunt last night was successful. Any time you can watch lion cubs is sure to be amusing, and this was no exception. We also got to observe one of the mothers navigate her way out of her perch on a tree limb. To was fun to watch her struggle over some tree branches in order to make her way to the bottom.
We started our night drive by visiting the lions again. Seemingly out of nowhere, the rest of the adults appeared, collecting to have a group nap prior to hunting. We observed both yesterday and today that the two mothers of the five cubs work together to care for the young ones. This care extends to allowing any cub to nurse from either (or both) mothers, which we thought was a bit extraordinary. On a night drive we had a great leopard sighting, as well as genets, mice, savannah hares and white-tailed mongooses.
Pictured: lioness in tree, spot the baby elephant in the mud, baby elephants wrestling, leopard
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