Departing an endless plain which itself is surrounded by giant volcanoes, one still active, we entered the almost silent world (except for 1000 vultures and hundreds of small parrots) of the Sanjan Gorge. These 1500 ft cliff faces are over 800 million years old. The river is shallow, only a foot deep; how could such a flow cut through these ancient mountains to create a scene?
The cliff faces are sheer, many boulders as big as a house have fallen and lay intact; others broken to expose a rainbow of colored rocks. I pick up flaking mica, green, rose and bronze quartz, granite, the most beautiful gray in the world streaked with reflective silver. The walls of the gorge seem balanced, as if I shouted all would tumble, but no, an Egyptian goose screams past us and all the rocks stand. I pick up rocks and study them every 3 yards. How the hell could I carry these out? How could I leave them?
Lazero, our Maasai guide has a rucksack, almost as if he could read my mind. We drink water, eat our lunch. He seemed to know that he would not be carrying out an empty sack.
His walking stick, a beautiful mahogany stick is useful when the rocks block my way or when I decide to climb up a slope to sit and view the spectacle around me. I'd love that stick but it came from a far and Lazero is extremely attached to it! Oh well, I wish I could take home the gorge!! I'll have to come back!
We carry on and the walls seem wider and more rugged as they close in on us. A vulture glides 500 feet over my head and still lands half way up the rock face. Paul tells me that for the past 5 million years these vultures have nested on these cliffs during the rainy season. Daily flights to the Serengeti plains bring back a crop full of wildebeest afterbirths or zebra remains. How wonderful nature is. These are Ruppel's vultures. This is their breeding site.
As the river flows it forms rock pools; plovers, lovebirds, sandpipers and red billed queleas flit around. In the deep shade of an old fig tree Lazero explains the many cut marks of an exposed root. Each cut represents a night that Maasai warriors spent here eating meat and dreaming of cattle raids to come and lion hunts past.
We head back over the rock faces and are greeted by the plains view; zebra and wildebeest are coming to drink, the cool late evening shadow of the mountains behind contrast with far off brightly lit volcanoes.
Our camp vehicle awaits with cold drinks and we return to camp to watch the eastern mountains fade as the sun sets behind us.
Paul Oliver and I wrote this in November 1995,
when Paul first scouted the area to establish his Sanjan Camp
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