Jean and Richard have been going on safari together since their honeymoon in Kenya in 1976. However Richard’s own safaris started 20 years earlier than that. He was born near Nairobi in Kenya in 1945 and spent the early years of his life living in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. He first visited Nairobi National Park as a 7-year old in the 1950’s. In addition, his uncle had a sugar plantation in Tanzania near Lake Manyara National Park and the more famous Ngorongoro Crater Conservancy. Some of his early memories of animal safaris were visits to Lake Manyara as a 10-year old where he sat in his uncle’s old open-topped Landrover directly beneath trees occupied by the famous tree-climbing lions of Manyara. These lions climb the trees partly for the height advantage, and partly to get away from the heat and clouds of blood-sucking Tsetse flies that plague their lives.

Richard returned to East Africa after secondary school in England to work in all three countries. In an amazing coincidence he was to sit in a similar open-topped safari vehicle again, over 60 years later, this time with his wife Jean, under the very same trees watching what could have been some of the descendants of those same lions. Unfortunately, no photos survive of the 1955 visit but these are from 2017:

Breaking down on safari was a rather common event back in those days. The nostalgic photo used as the header of this page was taken in 1993 when our bus suffered a broken front spring. A slightly nervy time as a herd of elephants was approaching from behind the bus. Ten years earlier we had also been brought to a halt – that time because of mud.

The first photo below is from 1982 of us digging out our stranded bus. We later found there was a male lion in the bushes just yards away. The other picture is from 2022, 40 years later, taken in the 33,000 acre Olare Motorogi Conservancy, which adjoins the Maasai Mara Reserve.

Our safari to Kenya in 2025 might well prove to be our last, but we said that in 2017, 2021 and 2022. So, never say never …. right?