Returning to a favorite place

One of the amazing aspects of living here is your proximity to spectacular places like the Masai Mara. One is able to see giraffe on your way to the airport from Nairobi’s city center. Imagine what you can experience just a bit outside the urban sprawl. My definition of wildlife used to be squirrels, raccoons, mice. Clearly, I need to adjust that definition.

Even though I have been to the Mara before, I jumped at the opportunity to return to the fabled bush. I decided to join some friends on a weekend trip—you know, just a quick jaunt to the Mara. In contrast to my prior visit—a relatively well-funded excursion—this more recent journey was definitely budget conscious.

We drove from Nairobi to the Mara.


Giraffe on the plains

For those of you who are not familiar with Kenya, the distance from the city to the Mara is not all that great—similar to driving from New York to Boston in the U.S. of A. At least that is how it appears on a map. In reality, the trip takes nearly three times as long, especially when driving at night (which, of course, we did).

The road to the Mara is widely known as the worst road in Kenya. I haven’t traveled on all of the Kenyan roads, but I can say that this was the worst road I have traveled on—ever. In fact, for the second half of the trip, we were more bush-whackers than road-warriors, when the definition of road and off-road merged into one. As with most weekend trips, our group was supposed to leave a little early on Friday, in order to arrive in the Mara before sundown. (We would realize later why sundown was an important variable in the equation.) Due to various issues with work, and food, and petrol, and exchange rates, we didn’t make it out of Nairobi until 5 pm, just in time for Friday afternoon rush hour. Not a great beginning.


Sunrise in the Mara

For the first have of the trip, everything was fine. We were on tarmac roads, with a quite a bit of construction going on, but nothing to make us think of the “worst road in Kenya”. The sun had set long ago, and the sight through the windows was complete darkness, save for the occasional fire started by Masai or other rural inhabitants.

Once we hit Narok, largely a massive truck stop that had morphed into a town, the smooth sailing was over. In fact, so was the road. Just beyond Narok’s outskirts, we turned into the bush, and would be bush-bound for the next three hours, bouncing over rock, wading through rivers, and kicking up dust all the way. We got really worried when the driver kept rolling down the windows and sticking his head out, in an attempt to stay awake.

The bush beating seemed to take forever. We found out later that we had to take the long way. We didn’t even know there was a choice—we certainly would have opted for the shorter route. As it turned out, the shorter route was also a much more common track. In fact, it was particularly favored by elephants. Elephants are very easy to spot during the day, not so easy at night. And even though we were in a relatively large van, we were no match for an adult with two, large ivory tusks. So, to be safe, we had to avoid accidentally startling elephants at night. Wise move. Evidently it was illegal for tour guides to be arriving in the Mara much after sunset. Now we knew why. Whoops…

The rest of the weekend proceeded as planned. We saw lots of game (although no cheetahs), woke up early for a beautiful sunrise game drive, and taught the Masai guards how to make s’mores (well, after the Masai taught us how to build a proper campfire). Life is good.

A few photos from the Mara: