The African lion is fabled as the King of the African Jungle. On a recent vacation to the Maasai Mara game reserve in Kenya, I was awed at the sheer respect that the African lion commands. It was one of the most rewarding trips in all my wildlife safari vacations.

It was the morning a day after our arrival at Olarro Camp located in the Maasai Mara, one of the best animal safari destinations in Africa. We departed camp at around 6.00am in the morning for our much awaited morning game drive. Our Maasai guide, Sammy, and the camp manager Sean packed us in their open Land rover truck and off we went on a popular game track. We were pleasantly surprised at Sammy’s spotting prowess that, less than a kilometer from camp, had already spotted a lone male cheetah. Probably on its early morning hunting stakeout, the cheetah wasn’t very amused at our unwelcome intrusion and trudged along grudgingly.

The mating Lions Off we went to look out for the elusive lions in the short savannah brush. We were negotiating a blind corner when …..Wham… a pride of 3 young males in the company of a lone female. The minute I spotted the lions, I knew this is not the situation you want to seem too intrusive. One seemingly larger male Lion with a slightly darkening mane was separated from other 2 young and was busy courting a Lioness. The two other lions seemed to have lost the contest for the single lioness and were circling around the pair with a lot of bitterness. Our arrival had simply compounded their anger. On the other hand, we had walked onto a mating pair and the dominant male was so infuriated by our interruption of his engrossing activities with the lioness. We simply had too many lions against our arrival. For a full 5 minutes, there was absolute silence as each party looked deep and hard into the eyes of the other. Trying to read the intent of either, we starred long and hard. I could feel my thunderous pulse as through my heart had moved into my arms and ears. Our fear was worsened by the fact that we were riding in an open vehicle and the lions would have had no trouble taking us out …. one by one.

Deceitful distraction The African lion has this uncanny behaviour when faced by such an intense gridlock. It simply looks aside as if something else more urgent got its attention, while keeping you within its visual sphere. This serves two purposes, one is to disarm you by trying to distract your stare and secondly to cleverly provide a leeway to the impasse and hostility created by locking eyes in an imminent confrontation. When faced by a formidable enemy who it cannot translate to food, the African lion will never attack if you have your eyes locked. One cannot be too cautious; “you never know what surprise these humans can spring… a club, machete or worse even….a bloody gun”.

The day is saved A relief to this situation came from the other two young, small maned lions who noticed their chances of contesting for the lioness, had just gone from worse to impossible…..there were just too many of us for their liking. They casually strolled of with their heads high and into underbrush. It took the older male Lion about five minutes to be reassured that we posed no threat to his mating advances to the lioness. Usually, the most dangerous situations to be caught in are between a mating pair or a lioness with its cubs. The King lion proceeded to mate with the female unperturbed by our presence; like we never existed…. and if we did then he was seeing things or could as well have been blind. “A lion’s got to do what a lion got to do….you want to stay and watch… well that’s your problem”

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