Early Saturday morning we left the city of Kigali for the natural fauna and flora in Akagera National Park. It’s located east in Rwanda, at the boarder with Tanzania and it was my first safari. In the park we saw the boarder in the shape of the Kagera River, and it was stretched out like a great lake in one direction and endless water in the two other directions. I even received an sms saying “Welcome to Tanzania”, but we didn’t cross the river and stayed in beautiful Rwanda.
Safari was not what I expected it to be and I absolutely loved it. I found the constant scouting for wildlife very exciting. There was always something to look at. I was looking at birds, reptiles and animals under the ever changing sky, with grass, trees and the rust red soil, all as my thoughts were roaming the unknown from the back of the car.
We were in the car for two days and had a lovely stay at a camp site in the north of the park. There were incredible tent cabins, great food, and stories around the fire at night. In bed the mosquito nets were all that separated me from the wildlife we were in the middle of. The sounds kept me up both for fascination and volume, and it was a bit scary too even though there were guards patrolling the area and we had clear instructions on how to not behave while we stayed there. It was quite the experience waking up overlooking the park plain in the calm morning mist.
While roaming the park we stayed on the roads and we didn’t bring single use plastic in to the park, we kept a safe distance to the animals and we stayed in the car. It’s difficult not to leave traces as a human, but we really tried.
We were lucky to see a lot of animals and birds during our stay. But the lions kept out of sight. The sad history of the lions in Akagera is that they were recently reintroduced to the park after the genocide in 1994, when people hiding in the park killed the lions to be able to hunt and eat other animals while people were trying to survive in the park. It was the past in the present.
A safari with deep respect for life.
What an experience, I feel very lucky to have been to Akagera ❤
MUSIC & NATURE 
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