It is January, the landscape is lush green, and in the Tarangire National Park an elephant herd appears in front of the camera of Michael Martin . Impressions from the north of Tanzania .

Twelve elephants cross the riverbed of the Tarangire River in the national park of the same name in northern Tanzania. I have my big telephoto lens supported on the roof of the SUV and take pictures of the peaceful scene through the skylight.

It was worth it that we have this time saved the long drive and the high parking fees of the Serengeti and visit the Tarangire National Park only 100 kilometers west of Arusha. Nowhere in Africa are there more elephants to experience in a landscape that is wonderfully green in January. The park also serves 700 lions as habitat, ornithologists count 450 species of birds.

The lifeline of the 2850 square kilometer park is the Tarangire River, which divides the park into an eastern and western half. It also carries water in the dry season and is then the center of attraction for countless wild animals. Mighty baobabs and countless termite mounds characterize the landscape, which changes its color in the rhythm of the dry and rainy seasons.

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Tanzania: elephant tryst

From Tarangire National Park it's just three hours' drive to two other destinations in northern Tanzania that are not nearly as well known as Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater, but worth the effort on bumpy dirt roads: the Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano and the neighboring Lake Natron. Both are located in the Great Rift Valley, which runs from the Red Sea in Djibouti through Ethiopia, Kenya to Tanzania.

Volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai: The Masai sacred, unique to geologists

In this rupture zone of the earth's crust, Ol Doinyo Lengai is the only volcano in the world that promotes a special, only about 500 degrees Celsius hot carbonitlava. After the big outbreaks in 2007 and 2008, he is currently calm and can be climbed in a long day trip. As I already stood four times on his crater rim, my friend and photographers colleague Jörg Reuther and I only let our photo drone rise on its slopes.

As unique as the volcano is to geologists, it is so sacred to the Maasai who consider it the seat of their god Enkai. "Every year we sacrifice a sheep or goat to the mountain," says Matthew, the tall chief of a small Massai kraal at the foot of the volcano. He lived in New York City for a long time and has now returned to his homeland; his age of 75 is not to be seen.

With a watchful eye and terse words, he watches as young men spray the cattle with a remedy for fur parasites. Then the mothers are milked before they are allowed out of the gate to spend the day on the pastures. Most of the village's 500 cattle are two days' march away on the plateaus in January, while goats and sheep have to cope with the relatively sparse supply of food at the volcano.

In this village too, it is the children who guard the goats and sheep and are therefore not sent to school by their parents. Chief Mathew points to a faraway building. "Our new school!" He says proudly. It is scheduled to start operating soon, and then parents will have the opportunity to send their children to school, at least temporarily.

Lake Natron: At the cradle of humanity

While the Lengai volcano dominates the landscape, one could almost miss the 58-kilometer lake of soda. Its surface is only visible on the horizon as a fine, silver line. With the off-road vehicle, we need almost an hour to get to its shore because of the rough terrain.

The Lake Natron is visited between June and November by up to three million dwarf flamingos, standing in shallow water and filtering it with their special beaks to absorb algae. Their long legs provide sufficient distance to the strongly alkaline water. One year ago, we flew over Lake Ness with a Cessna and photographed the salt surfaces painted red by algae, which can not be seen from the shore.

Between Lake Natron and the Ol Doinyo Lengai lies an inconspicuous rock plate, which one would not notice if it were not surrounded by a dilapidated fence. The rock has fossil footprints that are 120,000 years old. Anthropologists have detected 350 imprints of more than 30 Homo sapiens on the 150 square kilometer area.

But the traces of the Incarnation reach far back here. Mary and Louis Leakey gained world fame when they found bones of the early humans Homo habilis and Homo erectus in the nearby Olduvai Gorge in the 1930s. Richard Leakey continued the anthropological work of his parents on Turkanasee in northern Kenya. His finds on the east and west banks also made him world famous.

In a few days I will meet him in Nairobi for a conversation about the origin of man and his future.