After the lions at Duba Plains, somehow other lions are a little anticlimactic, but there is a good healthy pride at Savuti too.  They hunt almost entirely at night so one sees them after the fact.

Here is a young lioness--she has the great lioness intelligent expression but you can tell she's young by the spots still visible on her back legs.

This young lion is like a teenager with a few whiskers--just beginning to get a little mane.  Lots of spots still on him too, including on that well-filled stomach.

Our ranger, whom I mistakenly called James in the previous letter--he was Jackson at Savuti--spotted a couple of lion cubs playing around deep in the bush and we went off road a little to try to see them again, but got only glimpses like this.  We did not get close so as not to scare them away from the area.  Jackson said these cubs would be in big trouble when their mother got back for not staying right where she told them to when she went off to hunt.  They are quite young and should have stayed still, and not have been running around playing like they were, but cubs will be cubs, I guess.

This guy has no spots!  He was the dominant male and spent a lot of his time alone, as he was when we saw him.  He came towards us and we stopped.  He walked right by without giving us another glance.

 He has a wonderful expression from any angle.

And was a magnificent specimen indeed!  His color was grayer than most lions we saw and he had a lot of black in his mane like the desert lions do.  His mane looked more 'kempt' than those Duba boys.