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Population:
30,080,000
Capital:
Nairobi
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Click image for cheap hotels, cheap airline tickets and car rentals!
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Extract from the Kenya Travel Guides:
Lying on the equator, with the glaciated peaks of Mount Kenya - second highest mountain in Africa - rising from a natural environment of exceptional beauty, Kenya is a hugely rewarding place to travel. The country's dramatically diverse geography has resulted in a great range of natural habitats, while its history of migration and conquest has brought about a complex social panorama. But if the world-famous national parks, colourful ethnic mix and superb beaches lend an exotic image, the glossy hype of the tourism industry ignores Kenya's post-colonial poverty and deep political tensions.
In any case, treating Kenya as a succession of tou...
read the whole Kenya Travel Guides...
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| Tales : Mombassa to Nairobi Train |
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| It is said that something good comes from everything. Last month we travelled to Nairobi by train, and spent six hours sitting in a siding waiting for the debris of a freight train accident to be cleared. The good? The train usually only runs through the night, so we got an unexpectedly uninterrupted sleep, and then could see the countryside for the whole trip. The train takes you through a world of change.
You start in Mombasa 18 metres above sea level. Most of that rise is in the cliffs surrounding a reasonably flat island. Within a few minutes you have snaked through the industrial area, across the causeway, and have started to climb. It is humid and hot; coconut palms and papaya trees dominate and you catch glimpses of the receding ocean.
Soon you have climbed up to the Taru Desert, and cross it for 150 kilometres. It is a hot wilderness with no rivers, although the heavy rains of the past few months have turned it green with spiky, thorny, cactus-like growth. You see no life except at the scattered villages. This desert was one of the great obstacles in building this railway.
The climate changes; it is no longer humid. The landscape changes to thick bush and scrub. This is Tsavo National Park, the home in 1970 of 8 000 rhino, decimated by poachers to 100 today. It is still full of elephant, red-coated from the dust. They stay away from the railway, for they have 21 000 square kilometres of protected land in which to roam. Tsavo station and bridge is in this section. It is now as nondescript as any of the many other stations, but a century ago was the scene of the events portrayed in The Ghost and the Darkness .
The temperature is cooling as we climb, the vegetation becomes lusher, and the land is more and more cultivated. There are huge sisal plantations, much corn, and cattle ranching. The landscape is also dotted with baobab trees. Their elephant-grey trunks have a huge girth, and usually many leafless branches stick out of the top, looking like roots. Has the tree been planted upside down? They live for over 1 000 years and survive drought. They are a protected species, and they provide seeds that can be ground into flour in time of need.
In this more compatible surrounding you see grazing animals: zebra, antelope and oh!, that telephone pole was a giraffe watching the train go past. Sometimes to the south, you can see the snow-capped top of Kilimanjaro. You pass through Kima, which means 'mincemeat'. Police Superintendent Ryall was lion hunting one night with two friends from a stationary railway coach here, at the turn of the century. They fell asleep, the lion found a way in, and Ryall was ... kima.
The last few miles is a great contrast and the changes come quickly. There is the cement factory of Athi River, then the greenness of Nairobi National Park, with over 80 recorded species of animals, in sight of the tallest of Nairobi's buildings. But all too soon the city intervenes and we enter the south east slums. Tumbling cardboard and rusting metal shacks, outdoor toilets (which usually mean you toilet in public view), the only water in muddy, stagnant puddles. People mostly stand and aimlessly watch the train. Some children wave. A few walk alongside the track purposefully: to work, perhaps? Amazingly, they are dressed in clean clothes: how they do that is a mystery.
Downtown Nairobi is a little better, but is far fallen from when it was the jewel city of Africa. It is noisy and dirty and you are in constant danger of harassment from hawkers, homeless street children, and beggars. The city is now being called Nairobbery, and travellers say it is worse that Cairo ever was. It may be 1870 metres above Mombasa, with sunny days and cool nights, but it doesn't look down on us. We suddenly realize that year round humidity and heat is really rather pleasant.
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 Posted by User Not Logged In. on 25/04/2003 16:38:19 |
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Travelslang Kenya Travel Guides Opinions Tips & Advice
| General : If you need to go the police station |
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| Don't go near a meal time. Before you can make your complaint, the officer will point out that they would like food, and have no money. Could you help? If you cannot, your complaint will not be listened to. If you need them to visit a crime scene, provide transportation or buy gas. If you phone for an ambulance, you will usually be asked to take the sick person to the hospital yourself, or buy gas. Even a body will be left by the roadside until somebody pays the proper amount for the ambulance to come. |
| Posted by User Not Logged In. on 25/04/2003 16:33:55 |
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Travelslang Kenya Travel Guides Opinions Tips & Advice
| Dangers : Muggings |
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| Difficult to overstate the risk of being mugged, pick pocketed or conned in Nairobi especially if your guard is not right up (i.e. you just arrived and did not take a taxi into town). The coast is also a major target, other than that you will get the normal sticky fingers around bus stations in other parts of the country, but with common sense and luck you are pretty safe. |
| Posted by User Not Logged In. on 17/04/2003 18:25:05 |
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Travelslang Kenya Travel Guides Opinions Tips & Advice
| To Do And See : Game parks |
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| Samburu NP is highly rated (I however preferred the heavily touristed Kenyan extension to Tanzania's Serengeti, the Maasai Mara. Certainly the trip there over the beautiful white high lands and stunning Mount Kenya make it worthwhile. Lamu is so relaxed it is almost falling over, a great add on even if you are going to Zanzibar. A trip to lake Turkana really is worth the money and Lake Nakuru with it's millions of flamingos really makes a typical east African site. |
| Posted by User Not Logged In. on 17/04/2003 18:22:16 |
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Travelslang Kenya Travel Guides Opinions Tips & Advice
| Dangers : Tours to Tsavo |
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| After taking a trip to Tsavo East for a game drive I was told, on the way back, because others were going in a different direction, to get out at a gas station and wait for another jeep which had been organised. Needless to say it didn't show up. Out of the three choices of sleeping outside with the animals, getting on an overcrowded dilapidated bus or hitching, I chose the latter. A good choice as it turned out and when I got back the next day the tour operator was closed down. |
| Posted by User Not Logged In on 09/04/2003 16:52:20 |
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Travelslang Kenya Travel Guides Opinions Tips & Advice
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