Maasai visits

Ngorongoro Conservation Area is one of the last places in Africa where large herds of wildlife still roam alongside people. The people in question are the pastoralist Maasai, staunch traditionalists renowned for their ongoing adherence to a cattle-herding lifestyle and distinctive attire of toga-like red blankets, ochre-dyed hair and beaded jewellery. Several Maasai ‘cultural villages’ scattered in and around Ngorongoro Conservation Area now cater to tourists, and while these manyattas admittedly offer a slightly contrived the experience, all are longstanding Maasai settlements whose inhabitants live a largely traditional lifestyle - and the opportunity to meet, interact with and photograph these proud and charismatic people (whose traditional respect for the local wildlife is the main reason why so much of it still survives in Maasailand) is not to be missed.