Kenya: Birthplace of Safari

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Kenya has always been the classic safari destination. Its tourist circuits are as luxurious or adventurous as you want them to be. And, in parts, they are as devastatingly wild and beautiful as anywhere you'll ever visit.

Critics of Kenya mutter that things aren't what they used to be, that the country has become too touristy, that there's too much crime, that there won't be any wildlife left in 10 years that it's tottering on the edge of political disaster... But then, the same criticisms, largely unfounded, have been directed at Kenya since I first set foot there almost 15 years ago. For once, ignore the carping and believe the hype. Kenya's reputation as the ultimate safari destination rests on one simple thing: it is a truly wonderful country.

In Tsavo East, our vehicle was charged by a black rhino. It was, in all honesty, a less-than-spectacular confrontation: the rhino sized up the vehicle for a second, made an unconvincing lunge in our general direction, and then, even before we'd had time to register what was happening, lumbered away, deep into the impenetrable acacia scrub characteristic of Kenya's largest national park.

Later the same day we were introduced to Oliver Munyanga, the officer-in-charge of Tsavo East's rhinos. When we told him about our near run-in with one of his ill-tempered flock, he exclaimed, grinning, 'Oh, but this is wonderful! Now you can tell them in South Africa ... no, you must tell the world that the rhinos are back in Tsavo!'

To understand Munyanga's enthusiasm, you need to flashback to the late 1980s, when Tsavo was the main battleground on which Kenya's conservation authorities were apparently losing a protracted war against bands of armed Somali poachers. The park's rhino population had been reduced from several thousand to precisely zero, while its prodigious elephant herds, once numbering more than 20 000, were being poached at a rate of 1 000 animals annually.

When I first visited Tsavo East in 1988, the only living elephants I encountered were nervous youngsters in a small group that melted into the bush at the approach of a vehicle. More numerous were the foul heaps of elephant carcasses, bleached bones poking through rotting hides, entire herds that had been gunned down for the sake of a few adults' tusks. It was a bleak time for conservation in Kenya; many people feared - justifiably - that rhino and elephant would be extirpated before the turn of the century.

That all changed between 1989 and 1992. One turning point was the controversial CITES ban on the sale of ivory, another the merging of Kenya's disparate and ineffectual conservation bodies into the unified Kenya Wildlife Service under the dynamic leadership of Dr Richard Leakey. The symbolic burning of the Kenya government's ivory stock by President Daniel Arap Moi in 1992 drew much criticism from conservationists, while his shoot-on-sight policy towards poachers did little to endear him to human-rights activists. Hindsight suggests that Moi, whatever his other failings, was no fool when it came to putting across a forceful message.

Today, Tsavo's elephant population is nudging back towards the 9 000 mark, and most of Kenya's other main game reserves support visibly impressive numbers of elephant. Over the last few years, Kenya's overall rhino population has increased from 330 to 500. During this time, 50 rhinos have been re-introduced to Tsavo East, while a similar number have been settled in Tsavo West. Not one of these rhinos has been poached (although three have been lost to natural causes or predators) and seven calves have been born. This is hardly cause for unbridled elation but, no question about it, the rhinos are back in Tsavo.

The last decade has been a confusing time for tourism in Kenya. While the conservation authorities have got their act together, reinstating order to many reserves that were effectively off-limits during the late 1980s, Kenya has gradually slipped from pole position among Africa's safari destinations. In part this can be attributed to the country's inflexibility in the face of a sudden surge of competition. Go back 15 years, and Kenya had an almost uncontested monopoly on the international safari market. Tanzania was in economic freefall; Zimbabwe and Uganda were recovering from protracted civil wars; South Africa's apartheid policy had made it an international pariah; and Botswana, Namibia and Zambia were practically unknown as tourist destinations outside of southern Africa. Over the last decade, however, every one of these countries has marketed itself as a viable international tourist destination. Kenya, by comparison, has rested on its laurels, waiting for the tourists to come rather than actively seeking their patronage.

Another factor in the demise of Kenya as a prime safari destination is that the country, as viewed through the distorting lenses of the mass media, has presented wildly conflicting faces to the outside world. On the one hand, there is the Kenya of Out of Africa, a cozily nostalgic (and obliquely racist) world in which anonymously subservient houseboys fuss good-naturedly around liberal white masters and mistresses, who in turn pounce through the acacias enunciating the word 'Africa' as if it were the subject of a soft-focus chocolate commercial.

By way of contrast, there has been the hard news: the bitter recriminations and interminable courtroom machinations that followed the murder of Julie Ward in the Masai Mara Game Reserve 12 years ago; a duo of suspect elections held in a political atmosphere that briefly tottered towards the fractious; and, most recently, the horrific bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi. Much of the bad news has stemmed from isolated and unrelated incidents, many of which would have drawn minimal media attention had they occurred in a country whose capital city formed a less attractive posting for foreign correspondents. But mud sticks.

So which is the real Kenya: the sepia-toned dreamscape of Out of Africa, or the fragmented, violent land of the tabloid press? The answer is 'both' or 'neither' or 'sorry, I don't understand the question'. Part of Kenya's abiding fascination is that it seems to embody every paradox of a continent struggling to establish a cohesive identity in the so-called global village. By African standards, Kenya is a notably developed country, with high levels of education, a genuinely substantial middle class, world-class tourist facilities, and the semblance of an industrial belt sprawling out from its bustling capital. Yet where that industrial belt ends, the Nairobi National Park begins. In this unique sanctuary, unfenced on three sides, the skyscrapers of the city can be seen shimmering above hunting lions, pacing cheetahs and the herds of grazers that move in seasonally from the Athi Plains.

For all the modernity of its cities and towns, Kenya is also perhaps the most visibly traditional of African nations. Just as there are parts of Nairobi where walking around at night bearing any outward sign of wealth would practically guarantee being mugged, so are there vast tracts of northern Kenya where one can drive all day without passing another vehicle, without encountering a single person dressed in contemporary clothing, and -perhaps the benchmark of obscurity - without seeing a Coca-Cola sign.

No less striking is the religious contrast between the televangelist-obsessed upcountry towns and such time-warped Muslim trading ports as Lamu, Pate and Malindi.
These cultural paradoxes are mirrored and surpassed by the variety of Kenya's larger-than-life scenery. Within an area comparable to that of Botswana, Kenya's landscapes range through the picture-postcard beaches of the Indian Ocean and snow-capped peaks of Africa's two highest mountains, to the gaping enormity of the Great Rift Valley and the lakes and volcanic plugs that stud its floor. There is lush rainforest in the west, parched desert in the north and typical East African savanna protected in some of the continent's finest game reserves. For those swayed by statistics rather than superlatives, a fair indication of this ecological variety is to be found in Kenya's checklist of 1 078 bird species, the second-highest tally on the continent, in a country that does not even rank among Africa's 20 largest.

Was I forced to choose just one country in which to travel for the rest of my life, it would have to be Kenya. There are reasons for this that are difficult to isolate - the mood of the people, for instance - but a great many others that can be summed up in a few words. What follows are 10 such highlights, a mix of the obvious and the obscure - 10 good reasons among many others why Kenya, after all these years, continues to hold me in its thrall.

Amboseli National Park
The Park to silence every know-all who tells you that Kilimanjaro isn't in Kenya but Tanzania. They're right, of course, and Tanzania is the country to head for if you want to climb to the roof of Africa. But it is Amboseli, in southern Kenya, that offers the most spectacular views of the world's highest free-standing mountain, particularly in the early morning and late evening, when the snow-capped peak is most likely to emerge from its customary cover of clouds.
Kilimanjaro aside, Amboseli harbors some of Africa's most impressive tuskers, often to be found foraging waist-deep in the marshes near Ol Tukai Lodge. And the evening light, refracted through a haze of thin volcanic dust, is reliably awesome.

Kakamega & Saiwa Swamp
The jewel of the little-visited Uganda border area, Kakamega Forest is Kenya's premier birding site, with almost 300 forest species resident. Birds are the main focus of attention (a list of Kakamega's potential megaticks would run to a page), but Kakamega is also rated highly by lepidopterists and herpetologists alike, while a decent spotlight practically guarantees sightings of potto, a nocturnal sloth-like primate affiliated to the lemurs of Madagascar.

Saiwa Swamp National Park, which is easily visited in conjunction with Kakamega, is another superb birding destination, and the one place in Africa where the shy and semi-aquatic sitatunga antelope and localized De Brazza's monkey are easily observed.

Lamu
Situated on an offshore island in northern Kenya, Lamu is East Africa's most beautiful town: a traditional Swahili settlement of tall, whitewashed buildings and narrow alleys whose shape has changed little over the last 300 years. Possessed of a somewhat addictively laid-back atmosphere and engaging sense of place, Lamu has won the hearts of thousands of independent travelers over the decades, yet it remains practically untouched by package tourism. Possibly as a result of this, Lamu is that rare entity, a traditional town that has embraced and adapted to tourism without sacrificing what made it special in the first place. Islamic women draped in traditional bui-bui veils slink silently through the alleys, old men gossip and argue on the corners, and the near absence of motorized vehicles (a total of three at last count) ensures that life is lived at the pace of the island's ubiquitous donkeys.

Within day-tripping distance of Lamu lie the 12-kilometre-long Shela Beach, eerie mediaeval ruins on Manda and Pate islands, and some superb snorkeling opportunities.

Masai Mara Game Reserve
The game reserve the purists love to hate - too many tourists, the animals are too tame, it's all too commercialized. Ignore them: the Mara remains one of Africa's very best reserves, and the animals aren't so much tame as habituated to vehicles, which makes it a fine place to observe and photograph animal behavior. The wildebeest migration that crosses over from neighboring Tanzania between July and October is rightly regarded to be among Africa's most spectacular natural phenomena: the sight of thousands of these manically braying beasts dodging crocodiles as they cross the Mara River is truly unforgettable. All year round, the Mara is a fantastic reserve for predators, in particular cheetah and prides of 20 or more lion.

Meru National Park
The least visited of Kenya's major savanna reserves, Meru is dominated by tall grassland and transected by a dozen or so streams fed by run-off from nearby Mount Kenya. By comparison to the Mara, wildlife is thin on the ground and still recovering from years of heavy poaching. The glorious landscape more than compensates, however, as does the lack of tourist traffic. Meru is the best place in Kenya to see reticulated giraffe and the skittish lesser kudu. It is also the former stomping ground of George and Joy Adamson - Elsa the lioness, immortalized in the book and feature film Born Free, is buried in the park.

Mount Kenya
This is Africa's second-highest mountain, and Kenya's most popular hiking destination, best ascended over four or five days due to the very real risk of altitude sickness. Although not as high as Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya is far richer in wildlife, with large numbers of elephant and buffalo present, as well as resident populations of rhino, lion, leopard and numerous antelope and monkeys. The ascent leads through lush montane forest and bamboo thickets to the other-worldly vegetation of the Afro-Alpine moorland, dominated by gigantic lobelia and groundsels. More sedate visitors who wish to see something of the forest can stay at the Mountain Lodge to the south.
Olorgasailie Prehistoric site. This personal favorite provides a perfect example of Kenya's limitless opportunities for easy, inexpensive, off-the-beaten-track travel. Olorgasailie lies a mere hour from Nairobi along a good surfaced road, yet its wild Rift Valley setting feels several worlds away from the capital in spirit. The archaeological site, worked by Louis Leakey, is scattered with Stone Age tools.

Just as rewarding is the ravaged Rift Valley scenery, the opportunity to meet Maasai away from structured 'tourist villages', some great birding and a surprising amount of game - I've watched giraffe, eland and gerenuk pass through the campsite, seen hyaena droppings around the tent, and heard lions at night.

Rift Valley Lakes
The string of lakes that lines the Rift Valley west of Nairobi is worth devoting several days to. Most famous is Lake Nakuru, renowned for its concentrations of up to two million flamingos, an avian spectacle to match the wildebeest migration of the Mara. In recent years, the flamingos have spent more time at nearby Lake Bogoria, but Nakuru - even without its shimmering pink verge - is a gorgeous spot, encircled by hills, fringed by yellow fever trees, and teeming with game.

Between Nairobi and Nakuru, the stunningly beautiful and immensely budget-friendly Lake Naivasha is well known for its birdlife and is also the base for day hikes to Mount Longonot and Hell's Gate national parks. To the north of Nakuru, Lake Baringo supports prodigious hippos and crocs, while the arid surrounds offer excellent dry-country birding.

More remote, and correspondingly more rewarding, Lake Turkana is the largest desert lake in the world, and the focal point of a region inhabited by traditional pastoralists.

Samburu National Reserve
This semi-desert reserve, set at the northern base of the Mount Kenya massif, boasts a tantalizing range of localized dry-country mammals, notably the endangered Grevy's zebra and reticulated giraffe. The relative paucity of predators is compensated for by a remarkable diversity of antelope: over a two-night visit you can expect to see gerenuk, greater and lesser kudus, Beisa oryx, eland, Guenther's dik-dik, Thomson's and Grant's gazelles, impala and Defassa waterbuck.

Birders are in for a treat, with vulturine guineafowl, Abyssinian ground hornbill and Egyptian vulture heading an extensive list of 'specials' in this reserve.

The Samburu people, pastoralists who share a common language and ancestry with the Maasai, add a splash of colour to this otherwise harsh landscape.

Kenya has its fair share of sublime tropical beaches, for the most part more or less interchangeable with any decent Indian Ocean beach north of Durban. Watamu is the exception - a perfect bay of swaying palms and white sand, and neatly studded with a series of coral outcrops which mushroom dramatically from the turquoise water. The reefs of the offshore marine national park offer dazzling snorkeling and diving, while the nearby Arabuko-Sokoke Forest is Kenya's largest tract of pristine coastal woodland and home to several rare birds and mammals. Notable among these are the endemic Clarke's weaver, Sokoke scops owl, Ader's duiker and the golden-rumped elephant shrew. The forest also provides an appropriately primal setting for the mysterious - and highly accessible - ruins of the mediaeval Swahili city of Gedi.

Where to stay
Kenya has been receiving large volumes of international tourists for longer than almost any other African country, and it sometimes shows, it must be said, in the somewhat shabby state of rooms in the older, mid-range hotels. More often though, it can be seen in the impeccable hospitality and service at every level. Over the course of two recent trips to Kenya, we have been fortunate to stay at a few dozen of its better hotels and lodges. We noted a high standard overall, but the following three lodges stand out in our estimation as the finest in their respective categories: exclusive state-of-the-art bush lodge, package-oriented tented camp, and Indian Ocean beach retreat.

Elsa's Kopje
Open barely a year when we visited, Elsa's Kopje is currently the most talked-about lodge in Kenya, and deservedly so. Straddling a small hill in the heart of Meru National Park and close to the former camp of George Adamson, this exclusive lodge consists of eight large suites, each of which is individually designed around the rocks, with an open front facing the grassy plains. The plan of the lodge, radiating from a sumptuously situated swimming pool, is uncluttered enough to give guests the feeling of total privacy.

Assuming that you can bear to tear yourself away from your room, Elsa's Kopje is well-positioned for game drives in a park which currently sees so few visitors that it practically functions as a private reserve. Game-viewing is not to be compared with the more popular reserves in Kenya, but elephant, reticulated giraffe, Grevy's zebra and several antelope species are likely to be seen, while night drives routinely throw up excellent bushbaby and genet sightings, and the birding is consistently rewarding. A Zimbabwe-trained ranger is in the process of establishing a number of day and overnight walking trails, which will be for the exclusive use of lodge guests.

Governors' Camp
At the opposite end of the antiquity scale is Governors' Camp in the Masai Mara. This is reputedly Africa's oldest tented lodge, established 30 years ago on a site formerly reserved for the use of colonial officials, and it remains - almost uniquely, for a lodge sleeping up to 60 guests - a family-run business rather than part of a slickly managed chain. In common with most of Kenya's older lodges, Governors' boasts a prime location, set in a thick stand of riparian forest fringing the Mara River. The surrounding Musaria Plains offer game-viewing as good as any in Africa, while hippo, elephant and baboon regularly pass through the camp, and Ross's and Fischer's turacos are just two of many interesting avian residents.

Governors' scores full marks for attitude - not merely the service, but more significantly the emphasis placed on the bush experience. The food is consistently excellent, and all meals, weather permitting, are eaten under shady trees or glittering stars.

This is the only lodge we've visited in Africa where guests are routinely offered three game drives daily (before breakfast, before lunch and in the evening), and the years of experience are reflected in an unusual flexibility and sensitivity towards clients with special interests such as birding or photography. Balloon trips are run every morning from Little Governors', and bush walks are offered in the game-rich Maasai land immediately outside the national reserve.

Kipungani Lodge
Totally different in style and setting, Kipungani Lodge is one of Lamu Island's few concessions to up-market tourism, an isolated retreat tucked away among the paradise palm groves and mangroves on the opposite side of the island to the historical old town. This recently refurbished lodge, in stark contrast to the monoliths that line the beaches around Mombasa, is distinguished by its almost exclusive use of organic materials, dominated by palm fronds.

Boat trips to Lamu town are part of the Kipungani experience, and twitchers, anglers and water sport enthusiasts are amply catered for. But the underlying ethos is to encourage guests to do as little as is humanly possible: eat, sleep, read, watch the sun set behind the swaying palms; eat, sleep, wake up to the golden sunrise that heralds another stressful day...

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