riontel | Kenya: Part 7 (Masai Mara continued)

Part 1: Amboseli
Part 2: Lake Nakuru
Part 3: The Ark
Part 4: Sweetwaters
Part 5: Masai Mara
Part 6: Masai Mara (cont.)

In the morning we woke up extra early, bundled up and headed out to the Skyship Company for our very first balloon ride. We saw these balloons gliding over the Mara on our previous visit but didn't get enough time to organize a flight, so I made sure to have everything arranged beforehand, including leaving ourselves enough time to reschedule in case of bad weather. The weather on that morning was perfect and after watching the balloon get readied for the flight and listening to the very brief introductions and instructions from the pilot we got loaded into the basket and took off.

The basket is lying sideways and that's basically how you get into it to start out, not sitting down but lying down. It gradually but quickly turns right side up as the balloon fills with hot air and rises up. We were also warned that if the wind turned rough, that's how we'd probably end up landing. Instructions for the trip warn the riders that they need to dress warmly because the temperatures high up in the early morning could be quite low, but the balloon ride itself turned out warmer than being on the ground, thanks to the immediate proximity of the fire that kept us afloat.

And then we were up and watching the sun rise with the savanna sliding by below us.

That early in the morning wispy mist was covering the ground making everything look mysterious and magical.

As the flight continued, mists slowly melted away and we could see the animals way below us enjoying their morning. Few were still enough and large enough to capture from a relatively fast moving balloon.

These two vultures (Lappet-faced Vulture (left) and Rüppell's Vulture (right)) were perched on the tree, on a level with the passing basket.

Balloons, according to our pilot, are among the safest air transports available, because they are rarely used to travel great distances, I suspect. Their flight direction is controlled by a change in altitude with different wind currents at each. The distance it can go depends on the wind speeds, the pilot mentioned that once they ended up landing in Tanzania the wind was so strong. Not sure how their chase car handled the little obstruction of a national border. In US, there are laws governing maximum wind speeds at which balloons are still allowed to go up, but in Kenya it's mostly at the discretion of the pilot, and they will go up in anything short of a gale. I am not sure what distance we covered but it wasn't more than 20 km, because the winds were quite gentle, consequently our landing was completely uneventful signified by no more than a small bump. From the landing site we were driven to what was supposedly the site of the last scene in "Out of Africa" (which I still haven't seen all the way through), encountering our first hunt and kill on the way, serval successfully capturing a mouse.

These are snapshots from a video so the quality is a bit off.

As a final touch, we were served champagne breakfast, complete with crepes and omelets cooked to order, along with a full selection of other breakfast foods all of it presented on real china with real cutlery. And a priceless view.