This youngster, born in September 2013 in Kenya, was orphaned at birth (natural causes, it says on her paperwork). David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust’s orphanage for elephants and rhinos, located in Nairobi National Park, took her in.

She is among nearly two dozen young elephants at the orphanage available for fostering, a program that engages animal lovers at a personal level and helps fund their care. A couple of rhinos also can be fostered.

One of the orphaned elephants at David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust’s orphanage for elephants and rhinos runs to a feeding stall where he knows he will be bottle fed his evening milk.

Maxwell, the abandoned and blind rhino, makes himself available for attentions from his human visitors.

I visited the orphanage on the last day of a June 2014 press trip to Kenya.

During the trip, elephants got a lot of our attention, in part because our itinerary also included Amboseli National Park and the private Kitirua Conservancy that abuts it.

The Amboseli area is noted for its large elephant herds, but those herds are only large compared with other areas, not with herds of the past.

Our driver/guide at Amboseli, Joseph, passed along interesting trivia about elephants and frightening information about their fate, past, present and possibly future.

Starting with the fun factoids, he said the relative lengths of an elephant’s tusks indicate which tusk is most used, i.e., a shorter left tusk means the elephant is essentially left-handed.

The elephant’s trunk has 65,000 muscles and 3,000 nerve endings.

As for their fabled memories, Joseph said elephants don’t forget the scents of other animals or humans. He said you could blow a few times into the trunk of a baby, and the baby will remember you decades later.

Separately, we were told elephants have six sets of teeth in a lifetime, each good for a decade, after which they cannot live much longer.

In the 1960s, Amboseli National Park was host to 40,000 to 45,000 elephants, but now the park is down to around 1,600, Joseph said. Poaching is the major problem, but not in Amboseli itself, where the elephants benefit from 24-hour monitoring.

The problem, Joseph said, is that the elephants, which require 600 pounds of food daily per adult, must move around to eat, and that includes crossing into Tanzania, where licensed game hunting is legal. Poachers take advantage of that, he said.

Although continued severe drops in elephant numbers could render them extinct in a decade, Joseph said he is hopeful that “international intervention” will be effective enough that the elephant population will actually grow in the next 10 to 15 years.

And, by the way, another guide, Duncan, said the Big Five, meaning the large species tourists traditionally most want to see, originated as hunters’ top targets: the lions and leopards for their skins; rhinos for their horns; elephants for their tusks, and buffalo because they are so dangerous.

During our game viewing on Kitirua Conservancy, Joseph drove into the middle of a large elephant herd and we could get great close-in photos of very young elephants and others, plus one youngish male that was very curious about our vehicle. He moved his trunk across our windshield, probably checking for a memorable scent!

Elephants mill around our four-wheel drive on the Kitirua Conservancy, which is adjacent to Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya.

The Amboseli elephant herd as we sat among them, with a young one front and center.

Our guides said the animals see our vehicles, and even our tents, as big boxes, and these “boxes” don’t have odors that frighten them.

Visiting the orphanage was a chance to get even closer. We watched 16 elephants race to stalls for their evening feeding. They are bottle fed milk, then given tree branches to work over. (The youngest, including my Kamok, were not part of this parade.)

The orphans will be relocated to Tsavo National Park at around age 4 or 5 with more flexibility to meander in open spaces and decide for themselves when they will join a wild herd.

We also saw one of the rhino orphans, the blind 9-year-old Maxwell, now adult sized, but he cannot be returned to the wild as he cannot take care of himself.

Maybe I am anthropomorphizing, but I thought he looked sad and seemed to take consolation in leaning against the fence surrounding his corral and letting people pet him or touch his horn through the fence.

It costs only $50 a year to foster one of the Sheldrick orphans, a drop in the ocean when measured against the challenges. We receive regular updates on the progress of our fostered animals.

A family group walks toward us on the Maasai Mara in southwestern Kenya. On the Maasai Mara, we watched game on the Maasai Mara National Reserve as well as the adjacent Transmara and the Olare Motorogi conservancies.

An elephant wraps up a drinking session at a waterhole on the plains of the Maasai Mara.

A good view of the large herd we loved watching while on the Kitirua Conservancy.

This mother-and-child pair seen in real life on the Maasai Mara were better than any YouTube clip. The youngster tried vigorously to engage his mother in play. He then entertained himself by walking a few steps forward, then walking backwards, then repeating the process a few times.

The juvenile at left, seen on the Kitirua Conservancy, entertained himself by tossing grass onto his head, where some of that grass remained.

A toddler, seen on the Maasai Mara, nurses with one foot lifted off the ground as if he were about to dance. Our guide said the lifted foot indicates contentment.

Time to leave now: A group of elephants walking away from us on the Maasai Mara.

Ditto for a group on Kitirua Conservancy.

For more about Kenya, we offer at BestTripChoices.com the following, under the headline: Of movies, and animals on the move https://besttripchoices.com/international-countries/kenya/

This blog and photos are by Nadine Godwin, BestTripChoices.com editorial director and contributor to the trade newspaper, Travel Weekly. She also is the author of “Travia: The Ultimate Book of Travel Trivia.”

The post Kenya and the world’s largest land mammal appeared first on Best Trip Choices.

We did some of our game viewing in the Maasai Mara National Reserve and Amboseli National Park, but we did more of it on adjacent private property. The land is owned by members of the Maasai tribe; the government only fairly recently deeded the land to the Maasai although the area has been their home for centuries.

Private conservation organizations have leased large chunks of the private lands, creating conservancies that guarantee rental income to the Maasai, who then make the land available for game viewing and help protect the wildlife.

It’s brilliant.

The idea is to assist in the survival of endangered and the not-so-endangered species by expanding protected areas for wild animals while enlisting the active support of local communities.

Maasai cattle may at times be seen grazing on conservancy land; they are as much a part of an ages-old ecosystem as are the wilder creatures.

It also is typical that tourists, for a nominal fee, visit a Maasai village and, in this way, provide still more support for the system when buying the beaded and other goods that the Maasai produce.

All of which is a long way to get to the No. 1 reason Americans visit Kenya — watching the big mammals and a lot of smaller species do their thing largely unfettered by human hands.

Accepting that a photo is worth a thousand words, the attached shots tell the rest of this story. The animals are compelling (I saved my favorite, the cheetah, for last in the lineup below), but get a load of their human neighbors and the scenery, too.

Giraffes visible from the airstrip where we landed on the Transmara Conservancy. This conservancy abuts the Maasai Mara National Reserve in southwestern Kenya.

Maasai escorted our press group onto the grounds of Sanctuary Olonana, a tented camp on the Transmara Conservancy. The welcome also included singing and jumping displays.

Zebras seen on the Maasai Mara in southwestern Kenya. They were likely on the Olare Motorogi Conservancy, which abuts the Maasai Mara National Reserve. A Great Plains Conservation guide/driver conducted our game viewing in the conservancy and the national reserve, which look much the same, given they are within the same Maasai Mara ecosystem.

An example of the landscape on the Transmara Conservancy.

A Thomson’s gazelle, which seemed to be curious about us — or something nearby, seen on the Maasai Mara plains.

As frequently happens, impalas, at front, and topis, at the back, are seen together while grazing on the Maasai Mara.

A leopard, accustomed to tourist vehicles, walks among us on the Maasai Mara seeking a high point. She eventually ensconced herself in a tree. Our guides said the animals view our vehicles as boxes that are not particularly meaningful to them.

Wildebeests marching — and munching — on the Maasai Mara under the spectacular sweeping skies of southwestern Kenya.

Maasai women, brightly attired and adorned with traditional beaded earrings and necklaces, were among villagers welcoming our group to their home near Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya.

This dikdik, one of the world’s smallest antelopes, grazed outside my room on the grounds of Tortilis Camp, on the Kitirua Conservancy adjacent to Amboseli National Park.

A pair of elands seen in the tall golden grasses of the Maasai Mara.

Wildlife viewing also included many birds, including this crested crane seen as we drove to an airstrip near Amboseli National Park.

A cheetah walks toward us, as we gawk and remain safely in our vehicle, on the Maasai Mara. Our guide, who works for Great Plains Conservation, had almost magically spotted and brought us within photo range of a leopard and this cheetah within a little more than two hours.

For more about Kenya, we offer at BestTripChoices.com the following, under the headline: Of movies, and animals on the move https://besttripchoices.com/international-countries/kenya/

This blog and its photos are by Nadine Godwin, BestTripChoices.com editorial director and contributor to the trade newspaper, Travel Weekly. She also is the author of “Travia: The Ultimate Book of Travel Trivia,” which was published by The Intrepid Traveler; it can be purchased at https://intrepidtraveler.com/travia-release/

The post Kenya and a brilliant idea appeared first on Best Trip Choices.

And one very curious young elephant checked out the vehicle where I sat, by running his trunk over the windshield.

Impalas butting heads, seen in Nairobi National Park.

Hundreds of wildebeests hurry across the Ntiakitiak River on the Maasai Mara to get to fresher grazing. As with the Great Migration that takes millions of herbivores out of Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park toward Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve, generally shortly after midyear, predators are watching and waiting.

A young elephant investigates the strange vehicle in front of him, by running his trunk over the windshield. He is on the Kitirua Conservancy, adjacent to Amboseli National Park.

Most of the action occurred in the wild in or near Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve and Amboseli National Park.

In the exception, the baby elephant was in an orphanage that sits in Nairobi National Park at the edge of Kenya’s capital city.

I was in Kenya as part of a press trip sponsored by the Kenya Tourism Board, with support from private travel companies. They brought in press from at least four countries — Canada, Russia, the U.K. as well as the U.S. — as part of a broader project to reassure overseas travelers and travel sellers that it is safe to go to Kenya, despite some widely reported violent incidents in the country.

The recent triggers for our trips were lethal mid-May bombs in a Nairobi market paired with warnings of impending extremist attacks on the coast. The latter led British tour firms to evacuate hundreds of their clients from Mombasa, a coastal resort.

Nevertheless, tourists have been traveling safely in Kenya. For one thing, the violence has not targeted tourists and has not surfaced in the places tourists love best, the game viewing areas.

The key is to buy travel from a reliable tour operator and give some thought to the itinerary. Travel agents who have frequently sold Kenya have not stopped; indeed, they remain dedicated to the destination.

However, at least based on my conversations with U.S. agents, they promote accommodations on Nairobi’s outskirts rather than in the middle of town, and they may not recommend traveling to the coast either.

We did not visit the coast (that was a shame, as risk factors don’t apply equally to all destinations on the Indian Ocean), but we were housed one night in a Nairobi city center hotel.

Regardless, security was tight around any Nairobi property we visited, whether downtown or in the suburbs. Security personnel, among other things, inspected arriving vehicles with a mirror on the end of a pole that they could position for views under vehicles.

But, in the game parks, the only issue is the animals, and they don’t pose risks as long as visitors are sensible. That means staying inside the open-sided touring vehicles unless, for example, on a guided walk or hosted to a meal in the bush. It also means relying on night guards in the tented camps when walking around after dark.

Even the self-described fraidy-cat in our group realized, to her astonishment, that she was relaxed even in the unfenced camps.

Giraffes take breakfast from the treetops on the Maasai Mara in southwestern Kenya.

Breakfast in the bush is a typical treat offered by luxury safari camps. Sanctuary Olonana, a tented camp located on the Transmara Conservancy adjacent to the Maasai Mara National Reserve, prepared this one.

A sleepy lion gives in to a big yawn during a lazy afternoon on the Maasai Mara.

An impala harem stands back as the male who controls them patrols in the foreground.

A young elephant taking his milk at David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust’s orphanage for elephants and rhinos, located in Nairobi National Park. Some babies, like this one, hold their own milk bottles.

For more about Kenya, we offer at BestTripChoices.com the following, under the headline: Of movies, and animals on the move https://besttripchoices.com/international-countries/kenya/

This blog and photos are by Nadine Godwin, BestTripChoices.com editorial director and contributor to the trade newspaper, Travel Weekly. She also is the author of “Travia: The Ultimate Book of Travel Trivia.”

The post Kenya in the news appeared first on Best Trip Choices.