After a breathtaking lifetime experience of seeing wildlife in Serengeti, we started off for our journey to Ngorongoro crater reaching there around 5pm. We checked in at the Ngorongoro Wildlife Lodge which was at an ideal location overseeing the crater with wildlife roaming freely right below us.
Ngorongoro crater Tanzania safari
The lodge has a crater view balcony with a very powerful telescope from where we could easily sight animals. I was comfortably seeing multiple black rhinos, elephants bearing tusks, lazying lions while sipping up a hot cup of tea. It was a beautiful setting with sun going down coloring the sly and crater in yellow tone.
After adjusting in our rooms, we came back the crater view balcony and sat there for about 2 hours watching the exquisite views and wildlife sightings. We could not believe the pristine form in which we were seeing them in their absolute natural habitat. The animals within the crater cannot come out as the crater is 650 m deep and our safari vehicle had a challenging time maneuvering through descend and ascend.
The lodge has extensive usage of wood for its decoration from bar table to generic furniture around. The leather upholstery used for bar stools, sofa sets, cupboard covers and chairs were something unique. They are kept in little raw form with hair intact providing for extreme comfort and cushioning. The rest rooms were literally carved out of rocks and maintained extremely well.
As the sun set, the temperature started reducing rapidly reaching the figure of 55F(13C) which is quite cold considering we were in Africa very close to Equator. We had a quick dinner at Rhino restaurant and it was funny to live the extremity of globalization here.
A Chinese cook preparing Italian pasta in African continent for consumption by Indian whose ingredients imported from South Africa.
After a checkout at 6:00 am with packed breakfast and lunches we started to descend reaching the crater base by 7:30 am. Our game drive was planned for 4 hours in the crater base. The crater has 3 entries and 1 exit.
There was a chill in morning and our guide was feeling really cold. Our first wild sighting was of a herd of wild buffaloes about 500m from the lodge. As soon as our vehicle went near them, they just vanished into thick forests. On our descend we could see zebras walking grazing alongside red mud paths. The red soil is this region is extremely fertile and we could see large farm plantations.
The Ngorongoro conservation area is in an area of 8300 sq km with the crater in 250 sq km at a depth of 650m from the plains. It is instructed not to feed animals as they would forget their natural feeding/hunting techniques.
Giraffe is not found in crater due to scarcity of acacia trees. This animal is also popularly known as Miss Tanzania due to the way it walks with stiff and high head position while on the move. During the game driving we saw a pair of wild buffalos basking in sun with Ox pecker cleaning their skin. A little ahead I was surprised to meet one of my friends who is a regular to witness migration almost every year. It is always nice to meet someone in a foreign land who belongs to your homeland.
Lake Magadi is present at the center of crater making it the focal point for all live actions. During season time, the lake is full of Lesser and Greater Flamingos and we were able to see few of them on the shore. Our plan was to circumference the lake as that would provide us with ample game sightings. The Wildbeast present within the crater do a local migration from one part to another as getting out of crater is impossible for them. We were really lucky to see this unique migration apart from the Big Five encounters.
We started driving towards a green patch with a small pond to eat our packed breakfast. This is the place where we were allowed to get off the vehicle and freely walk around seeing wildlife all around us. We could see couple of hippopotamus peeking through the pond. We were watching them relax and also enjoy the much needed sunshine heat.
After a quick meal, we started the drive towards the far end off crater where we saw probably the biggest tusk elephant of our trip. The tusks were kissing the ground below it. We also saw 2 black rhinos is far off edge but could not drive there due to off road driving limits. We were still satisfied as we had seen them through the binoculars the earlier day. The clouds were playing hide and seek and whenever they covered sun, the temperature used to drop sharply. A little further ahead on the path, we saw many ostrich both male and female grazing on white cotton like grass.
There was diversity in the grasslands within the crater area. We could see some jackals hiding in brown grasslands and at one side elephants chewing on tall green bushes. There were also warthogs kneeling down and enjoying the thorny bushes.
By noon time we planned to exit the crater due to permit limitations and ascend was quick thorough the Lerai Forest where we saw white monkeys. This was the end of our wildlife safari in Tanzania and we were heading back to Arusha from where we had planned for going home to Dar es Salaam.
It was finally after 3 days that we were back on tarmac roads to speed to Arusha town by around 3pm. During the past 5 days we had covered approximately a distance of 1125 km.
- Black Rhino(Big Five member)
- Wild elephant(Big Five member)
- Lion (Big Five member)
- Wildbeast
- Warthog
- Giraffe
- Corey Bustard bird
- Zebra
- Greater flamingo
- Lesser flamingo
- Ostrich
- Jackal
- Hippo
- Wild buffalo(Big Five member)
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