During our stay at Mara Serena, as always, we got ready early and headed on our morning safari into the Masai Mara Reserve. While we were driving away from the resort, I happened to turn back. And when I did that, I caught the gorgeous sunrise with the Mara Serena property in the foreground. I made a mental note to get ready early the next day and spend more time observing and photographing the sunrise from the viewing deck of Mara Serena.
Today we decided to go to a location where a pride of Lions had been spotted the previous day. As we drove closer to the location, we noticed a few tourist vehicles parked on the side of the road ahead. It was obvious that they were watching a pride of Lions. Just as we drew closer, a Lioness that was sitting in the tall grass by the side of the road, got up and walked past all the vehicles and disappeared into a little culvert. It was evident that there were cubs resting inside that culvert. From the road, all we could see were the legs of this Lioness. Soon she went to sleep. Every now and then, she would lift her head, survey the landscape and go back to sleep. Just as this was becoming monotonous, a couple of Lions sat up a little ahead and we moved our vehicle to see what these Lions were up to.
As we got closer, we realized that this was a sub-adult pair of African Lions that were just resting in the cool morning sun. Given how close these Lions were to the road, I switched to the D700, 70mm-200mm camera setup and waited. The Lions kept shuffling around trying to find a comfortable position to sleep. Finally after a few minutes of resting, both the Lions got up and we were treated to an intimate experience of social Lion behavior, which we very happily captured in this series of pictures. Soon it was time for breakfast. We left the playful Lions to rest and drove back to Mara Serena.
