The view from my window

The view from my cot one morning on safari. She was taking a picture of the cape buffalo in the trees. All night long, I heard noises that the guide later identified as hyena, zebra and lion. No wonder they told us to stay inside our tents after dinner until sunrise.
Sunrise over the Serengeti plains, as viewed from outside our tent.
Tent interior. You can glimpse the bathroom area through the door on the right.
Notice the LED bedside reading lamps and the overhead lights. They are powered by a solar panel attached to the roof of each tent and a battery pack under the rear cot.

Hot safari showers are offered each evening before dinner. The water is heated over a wood fire and mixed with cool water in a gravity-feed elevated water bag. A 35 liter bag yields two military showers (turn the water off while soaping, turn it on to rinse) with fantastic water pressure. Showers are at dusk (5:30 or 6) so that the staff can get back to help prepare and serve dinner. It is also not safe for the staff to be in the bush area behind the tents after dusk because of the wild animals.

Dinner is served at 7:30 with drinks and hors d'oeuvres a half hour earlier. They light big torches at the front of the tents and the lodges and patrol the path to safely guide us between the dining tent and our sleeping tent. Then early to bed because the animals are most active early in the morning.

Don't you love the decor? The sinks and water ewers are made with hand-blown recycled glass. The wall hangings and baskets are handwoven in the region. I will post later about our visit to a weaving cooperative that produced the baskets in the Thomson safari camps and about those fantastic wall hangings.