"Excuse me....have you seen 1.5 million wildebeest?"

Aside from the obvious awesomeness, one of the main reasons for me to return to the Serengeti is to fulfill a bucket list dream of seeing 1.5 million wildebeests marching together in what was reported to be “one of the greatest spectacles one could ever see”. The great migration occurs every year as millions of wildebeest, zebras and antelopes wander from the Tanzanian plains of the Serengeti to the fields of the Masai Mara in Kenya. This sounded too good to be true...

Our accommodations were chosen based on the description of being a mobile tented safari camp that relocates based on the annual migration. I would think that this selection, coupled with the fact that we are looking for approximately 2 million animals – will lead to complete ease with finding the great migration. That was the thought at the start of our ultimately 11-hour game drive.

Wildebeest are reportedly not the Mensa cardholders of the animal world. One guide explains “They are the most stupid animals of them all. They have a memory of about one minute. I have seen them escape from a lion hiding behind a bush and then, one minute later, walk back past the same bush and get attacked again”. I tell you this to partially explain why we were having difficulty in finding the herd of a million+ animals.

We left camp early, headed southeast with plans to intercept the migrating line, who should be heading northwest – towards the Masai Mara. And so we drove...meandering down well driven paths and through some muddy trails – very thankful for our Land Rover and questioning why one would ever need such a vehicle in North America to fetch groceries – scanning the horizon for 1 million heads. And we drove...we were treated to many other amazing sights along the way...hippos, elephants, ostrich, cheetah, jackels etc but no sign of the migration.

Whenever we passed another safari vehicle, we would stop and Mohammed would lean out and have a conversation with another guide that went something like this...”excuse me have you seen 1.5 million wildebeest?”. To which the reply would imagine be something along the lines of, “seriously, you are missing 1.5 million wildebeest? Hahahaha – I’m only joking man – I know how hard it is to find a wandering herd of

the stupidest animals on the planet in a 30,000 km2 area. Tourists are idiots...let’s chat a little longer so they think we are tracking game and sharing tribal secrets. Hey did you catch Game of Thrones last night?” That might not be an exact translation – I am still learning Swahili.

Mohammed tried at one point to appease us; we had been searching for a few hours when we stumbled upon some wildebeest out wandering (probably lost). “Here is part of the great migration”! There were about 20 wildebeest. With great enthusiasm and flourish he started filling our minds with migration facts - I didn’t hear it...I was counting. After my count I simply turned to Mohammed and, with equal enthusiasm, replied “ummm...this is great, we are looking forward to finding the other 1,499,973.” (I don’t think 27 animals will allow me to cross the item off the bucket list!)

Turns out millions of animals can sneak up on you. One minute we are watching a few ostriches ...next we are surrounded by millions of hoofed animals. Once we were immersed in the great migration it became apparent why finding them had been so tricky – they we migrating the wrong direction. Stupidest animals indeed.