KENYA
Kenya has a well-earned reputation as the home of safari. In the eighteen and early nineteen hundreds, safaris used to take months and a good many porters. Huge trains of people and equipment made their way slowly across swathes of unmapped territory, rich with wildlife. It was pioneering and romantic stuff, immortalized by Hemingway and Out of Africa.
The country has changed much since those rough-and-ready times, and yet the adventure hasn’t paled. Well-known areas such as the Masai Mara or Amboseli still offer staggering opportunities to see big game against a dramatic backdrop. It is possible to ride the endless grassy plains of the Masai Mara on horseback and there are private conservancies where you can roam with camels and Samburu tribes’ people across the countryside, much as those old pioneers did.
It is a country of splendid diversity from the snowy cap of Mt Kenya where one can fish for trout in pristine lakes, to the jade green desert lake of Turkana – best seen from a helicopter. That said, the country guards it’s most special experiences well and it takes long acquaintance with the place to unlock them.
