A Morning at Lake Nakuru
Jungle scouting and wildlife watching turned me into a morning person. If you love observing nature, or simply being in the presence of trees and birds, early mornings are every bit worth losing the lazy time in bed. While every phase of the day has its own value for a serious hobbyist nature-watcher, early mornings make the experience sweeter than any other time. What’s more, places look and feel very different in the mornings than the rest of the day.
My observations are so tuned around these parameters that I sort my photographs into morning and afternoon categories. Looking through the folder of photos I took in Lake Nakuru, Kenya, I realised what a comprehensive compilation of a “jungle morning” it is:
Kenya’s Nakuru is a beautiful ecosystem in the Rift Valley, a 3-hour drive to the northwest of Nairobi. To reach the eponymous lake, we drive through a grassy jungle, dotted and strung with Fever trees, their wide latticed canopy filtering sunlight in streaks. If the quiet track and the unruffled undergrowth gives you a sense of being the only early riser, don’t flatter yourself.
It isn’t too long before you pass by some early birds, the literal kind, who have been so busy looking for the worm, not just in the proverbial sense, that you wonder if you are already late to the party scene.
The brisk walkers and the morning joggers you meet only seem to endorse your apprehension.
At this point you may start to console yourselves that those pesky, small creatures are just restless and the big, lazy ones wouldn’t have started the day yet… even the famously lazy ones look at you like this…
The wet tuft on the chin but a dry set of legs speak of a grazing session that has begun fairly early. The waters, on the other hand, still look a reassuring cool blue, reminding you that the golden rays of the rising sun haven’t gathered enough steam to warm the lake yet.
A zebra hurriedly leaves his herd to wade through the waters in swift strides, faintly reminiscent of a temple priest shuffling down to the river for his ritual ablutions.
Just when you begin to despair that the jungle is a buzzing hive of brisk activity, a meditative waterbuck reminds you that a good start to the day may not always be about pace.
A space of quiet contemplation, of solitude may be just the other less explored side of the coin you have always known as laziness…
…just the kind of start you need to broaden your worldview…to feel the expanse of your wings…
…to reclaim your world… or, er… at least your focus for the day.
What an inspiration nature can be! The violin in your head breaks into a crescendo of elation before an abrupt halt that you barely notice. Your driver stops by a tiny promontory where life appears to be unaffected by motivational posters.
“Eh?… It’s time? Already?” says the reluctant lion to his mate who is sternly nudging him into wakefulness.
A Rock Hyrax dreams of warm sunshine, unaware that he is being bathed in it. If ever there was a need for poster boys for sloppiness, the blissfully sleepy Hyrax would volunteer for the job, if he wasn’t already on it, that is. I wasn’t sure, he seemed so into it.
We drove around the promontory to reach the top of the Baboon Hill, curiously bereft of baboons, for a better view of the forest below. The scene that we saw was a carpet of sunny meadows, and a stretch of the cool blue lake, part busy, part lazy… a lot like the rest of the world, with a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.
Mornings in the jungle, above the excitement and the wonder they inspire, restore this very sense of balance that the constantly nagging, guilt-ridden minds of the modern world seek.
