A Winged Odyssey Through Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia

The English writer William Hazlitt long ago reminded us that “in traveling, we visit names as well as places.” And on this last of our three private air safaris, we’re presented with a banquet of resoundingly evocative African names: the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Kilimanjaro, Lake Victoria, the Impenetrable Forest, Lalibela (all of which, as it turns out, are marvelous places, as well as evocative names).

After a night in Nairobi’s House of Waine, we’re driven to Wilson Airport, where we meet our pilot-guide and fly south, past Kilimanjaro and into Tanzania (with a little luck the massive volcano will be clear, and its still-sparkling glaciers visible as we pass). After a quick re-fuel and border formalities, we fly east over the red and purple waters of Lake Natron, past the sacred volcano of Ol Doinyo Lengai, lingering perhaps over the vast, game-filled Ngorongoro Crater, before landing on the Serengeti Plain, Beryl Markham’s “warm sea of life.” (Markham, a world-class aviatrix, wrote — with a little help from Antoine de Saint Exupéry — the sometimes slightly fanciful but always tremendously enchanting West With the Night, a book that, along with Dinesen’s Out of Africa, will make it difficult for you not to seriously contemplate an African air safari.)

We’ll spend a couple of nights in a tented camp on the Serengeti, making classic, rolling game drives and returning to happy dinners and fellowship by a campfire, listening for the roar of lions in the dark (something which merits a high and shining place in the mental scrapbook). And perhaps we’ll raise a toast to Ms. Dinesen, who very accurately described safari life as making you “forget all your sorrows and feel as if you’d drunk half a bottle of champagne, bubbling over with heartfelt gratitude for being alive.” Now we fly across the great inland sea of Lake Victoria to Entebbe, Uganda, and further eastward toward the Virunga volcanoes. After landing and making a delightful rural drive (it’s no wonder Uganda was known as “The Pearl of Africa”), we reach Gorilla Forest Camp. The forest in this case is the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, largely contained within Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, and as for the gorillas, we’ll trek through the forest in pacific search for them, and likely come across them, and just as likely cherish our hour with them for the rest of our lives.

We’ll fly back to Entebbe and head back over the lake for a refueling and border stop at Kisumu, Kenya, then head north for a magnificent two-hour flight, first over sweet highland greenery, then across the lava fields, flamingo-thronged lakes, and volcanic cones of the country’s increasingly sere northern desert, arriving at last at fierce Lake Turkana, a long, thin swash of blue in the midst of seemingly eternal, endless dryness. We’ll stay at the basic but serviceable Oasis Lodge on the shores of the almost disconcertingly personality-rich lake, and as we walk its shores we may well see one of Turkana’s massive crocodiles floating by, dreaming of the Pleistocene. The beauty here is spare, peeled back, and life is precious; it hangs by a thread in this harsh environment.

Lifting off, we head north along the Great Rift Valley and the green highlands of Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, a surprisingly cosmopolitan city. Our final air safari day is fittingly exceptional. Out of Addis, we climb to the highland plateau (which David Buxton compared to “an island rising up from the wastes of equatorial Africa”). Small villages dot the ridges and peaks, waterfalls leap from precipices. Soon we intercept the canyon of the Blue Nile and follow it for awhile on the way to our landing at Lalibela, a mountain stronghold and pilgrimage site of 11 monolithic churches carved of underground rock, a world-class wonder. We’ll overnight nearby, and the next day make another grand mountain flight to Gondar, Ethiopia’s ancient capital, where we’ll have a short stroll around the ruins of this intriguing city. The next day, after a tour of Gondar’s castles, we return to Addis Ababa, and reluctantly get ready to return home. We may depart with a few more words from Isak Dinesen in mind: “Now,” she wrote, “looking back on my life in Africa, I feel that it might altogether be described as the existence of a person who had come from a rushed and noisy world, into a still country.”

Day 1: Arrive Nairobi, House of Waine • 2: fly to Serengeti (with potential views of Kilimanjaro), scenic flight over Lake Natron, Ol Doynio Lengai Volcano, and Ngorongoro Crater, Sanctuary Kusini tented camp • 3: Serengeti and environs, Sanctuary Kusini tented camp • 4: fly to Bwindi, Uganda, Gorilla Forest Camp • 5: gorilla trekking, Gorilla Forest Camp • 6: fly to Lake Turkana, Kenya, with scenic flight over Rift Valley, Suguta Valley, and Lake Turkana, Oasis Lodge • 7: fly to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Sheraton Hotel • 8: fly to Lalibela, sightseeing and visit to inspiring rockhewn churches, Roha Hotel • 9: fly to Gondar, sightseeing, Goha Hotel • 10: fly to Addis Ababa; transfer to airport and depart for home.

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