Safaris typically conjure up images of vast, sweeping plains. Of wildebeest migration and prying predators and grasses yellow and brown. Acacia trees and a snow-capped mountain in the distance to round off the sprawling immensity. It’s a picture we’ve seen in postcards, films, paintings, endlessly reproduced, simulated, cartooned.
Rarely does one think of the savannah as lush, verdant, or densely wooded, as different pockets woven together rather than one, panoramic mass. The Serengeti, Tanzania’s largest national park, may be named after the Swahili word for “endless plains”, but the way I saw it was very different: a collection of microcosms, traversed by ravines.
