The Mara Base Camp

With the torrential rain, the black cotton soil turns the road leading into the Mara a slippery mess of mud. Only a few herds of the resident gnus watch the humans driving into the Mara. Brilliant bursts of the towering aloes in orange bloom carpet the hills outside Sekenani gate.

By the time we arrive at Base Camp on the banks of the Talek river, it’s pouring again after a short interlude, just time enough for a burst of the sun to entice a pride of 10 lions to bask on the road between Sekenani and Talek gate. As usual, when the cats are spotted, everyone makes a beeline for them. For the first time visitors into the Mara, it’s the most awesome meeting of the king of the beasts. The lions lounge on the marrum road, unperturbed catching the last rays of the sun. And then the skies burst open again.

There’s very little to show that a camp exists in the green canopy of trees. Tall acacias shade the grassland bordering the river, which at this point is in full flow with earth swept chocolate waters.

“We encourage guests staying with us to plant trees to offset the carbon emission,” explains Amos Sironka Ole Tininah, the maasai guest relation’s manager. “We have worked out the number of trees that will absorb the carbon dioxide. It’s 15 trees per guest. For us to maintain these trees, the clients pay US$ 20. This batch of trees is eight years old,” he points to the tall acacia grove by my tent. Carbon credit, as it’s dubbed, is the latest trend in trying to balance the healthy equilibrium of our atmosphere.

Everything at Base Camp is worked on the concept of working with the earth. It reminds me of a beautiful quote by the English philosopher Francis Bacon in the 16th century. “You cannot command nature except by obeying her.” It really means that we don’t need to have an antagonistic relationship with Earth to get the best form her.

The tented camp sits almost camouflaged in the midst of the natural grassland and the acacias. My tented abode is very classy, complete with a timber verandah shaded with a grass-thatched roof and a hammock to laze in, the flapped doors open to a room overlooking the grassland outside but the best is the shower. Every tent has its own version. I like the one with the open skies and part of it walled by the huge mugumo tree.

“The principle of Base camp is that when we leave this place,” says the red-clad Maasai manager “it should go back to grazing land within six months.”

I spend the rest of the morning with him exploring the camp. It’s all eco-architecture from the dry toilets where the waste is turned into manure, to the waste water from the showers and sinks fed to the trees around the grounds. Solar panels soak in the sun’s rays and the energy is then fed to the energy saving bulbs in the rooms. The kitchen floor lets the rainwater flow into a water harvesting tank.

We climb the watch tower leaning against another mugumo tree. The Talek flows in full spate and the grass plains are alive with impalas and gazelles. A crocodile suns itself on the higher banks motionless like a piece of log.

After a gourmet meal of steak roasted in an energy saving jiko, we head out for an afternoon game drive. This time, a trio of cheetahs basks by the side of the road. The Mara, by extension of the Serengeti, is the last of the wide-open spaces left to the wild cats like the spotted ones we’re watching. What we know is that we have between 500-1000 cheetahs in Kenya today. A century ago, there were more than a million of these cats in Africa. Today, about 10 per cent of that number exists. It’s the same for most wildlife. India, the country that gave the cheetah its name, has none left in the wild, the last run into extinction in the 1940s.

With good management, we the last continent that has such a rich biodiversity can still look after the ecosystems that house everything.