Up close with the kings of the jungle in Queen Elizabeth National Park

The last time I visited a savanna grassland national park was about seven years ago when a friend contacted me to drive his parents around the country. His parents, an aging Jewish bus driver and his wife, were here to see the country that had been home to their son and daughter-in-law for a few years.  Whenever a chance to travel presents itself, I always gladly take it.

After a winding route through the districts of Jinja, Kapchorwa, Soroti and Lira, we entered Muchison Falls National Park through Pakwach on day three. The safari lodge we slept at had no budget accommodation options.

Tucked away in the middle of the savanna grasslands, far away from human settlements, I was not ready to break the bank just for a few hours of sleep. When bedtime came, I slept in the van.

I said my last prayer

At 3am, I was jolted out of my sleep by loud growls of lions next to the van. They were so close. I was mortified. In my mind, the lions were bound to smell my presence, break the windows and maul me.

I had zero experience in the wild. I did not know that lions cannot attack a car to prey on a human. I said my last prayer. And then as if on cue, the lions sped off into a distance. They had probably seen an antelope with their night vision eyes. I let out a long sign of relief and sat up. I could not sleep again.

I remembered a trip that would take me to Lake Mburo and Queen Elizabeth National Parks. Ever since those lions scared witless, I get chills whenever I think about it. As I set off, my wish was to get to see lions up close for the first time, in broad daylight. Maybe this would finally ease my heart and heal the seven-year trauma.

The sad story of Mburo’s lions

At around 12 o’clock, five hours after leaving Kampala, the Jewel Safaris driver and tour guide, Rachel Aheebwa, stopped at the main gate of Lake Mburo National Park. Aheebwa made sure we wasted no time at all as we still had hundreds of kilometres to cover to reach Queen Elizabeth, where we planned to spend the night. She entered the Uganda Wild Life Authority (UWA) offices and returned with a female ranger, and promptly entered the car for the game drive. 

“Are there lions in this park?” I asked Susan Etaremwa, the ranger as soon as she joined us. “Sorry to disappoint you, but there are no lions in Lake Mburo,” Mbabazi said.

But this was not always the case, she narrated. Lions used to roam these savanna grasslands a long time ago, when Mburo was still the hunting grounds for the ancient kings of Ankole Kingdom. Even as recently as fifty years ago, when president Iddi Amin gazetted it as a game reserve and pushed the king out, lions were still here in large numbers.

But the king’s clansmen invaded and started grazing their animals because they never stopped considering this area their own. Inevitably, conflict arose between the cattle keepers and the lions, resulting in the annihilation of the lions.

“About eight years ago, a lone lion crossed from Tanzania through Isingiro, killed about four people and ended up here. The police ended up putting it down because it had tasted too human flesh,” Etaremwa says.

Lake Mburo National Park is swamped with zebras, impalas, giraffes, water bucks, elands and hippos. It is flocking with beautiful storks, cranes, ducks, bustards, swallows, pheasants, 300 bird species in total and is a favorite with birders.

But there are no lions. The best place to go when looking for lions is Queen Elizabeth National Park, which also happens to be the most visited park in Uganda. Probably because of the famous tree-climbing lions of Ishasha.

Encountering lions

We made it to our final destination before dark. Before going to bed, Aheebwa informed me that we would leave at 7am if we were to see lions on the game drive. She made it clear that this was not an option. As it turns out, this quality is a mark of professionalism in tour guiding. 

At 7:30am the next morning, we arrived at the UWA offices at Kasenyi. There were dozens of tourists paying their park fees and making preparations for their game drives.

Minutes later, all the cars left through a northwards track, but Aheebwa went eastwards. Alone. We were slightly disappointed to take a lone road instead of joining the rest, but in less than thirty minutes, we found lions lying in the middle of our track. Her intuition had been right.

Picturesque moment

The three lions, two males and one female, were lying in the shed of another tourist vehicle. Aheebwa drove as close to the lions as possible without bothering about her open window. I was furious but she understood that lions cannot attack a car to target the occupants.

I whipped out my camera, passed through the pop-up roof of the safari vehicle and found a vantage point. I was able to take close-up pictures of the lions for several minutes, uninterrupted. In the meantime, she alerted her driver friends who had taken a different track that she had found lions.

In no time at all, tourist vehicles started arriving. As more cars took their positions around the lions, room for the tourists to see the king himself became less and less. A mature guide took command and told others who had been with the lions for some minutes to move, so that those far behind could come closer to the regal beasts.

And every time a car moved, the lions would move to look for a new shade. At one time they came so close that I could hear them breath. In that moment, the line between life and death could not have been thinner. If you dared to step off the safari vehicle even for a split second, that would be it.

The bravery of the local people

A story is told of a Japanese tourist who was mauled by a lion in South Africa. He had stepped off the safari vehicle to take better pictures of the beasts. But he was mauled before he took even one. He had been safe in the confines of the truck but once he stepped off, he had signed his own death warranty.

As we were making sure not to make any stupid moves, as we stayed in the safety of our cars, the local people boarding motorcycles were weaving their way through the cars, going about their daily lives as if oblivious of the looming death.

Almost an hour after we arrived on site, vehicles were still arriving, bringing tourists eager to see the king of the jungle. At one point, there were more than 40 cars surrounding the lions. Any action was filmed and snapped by hundreds of cameras. Capturing the regal awesomeness of the king himself. And I knew in that moment that I was over my trauma.