Getting off our bicycles and out of our stinky sandals at Borana Lodge was a bit like dying and going to heaven. The plush room, feather pillows and spa-size bathroom, along with daily gourmet meals and wine made for a change of gear and a surreal holiday. For a couple of decades the former sheep farm on which sits the luxurious boutique lodge has become a conservancy where every shilling is reinvested for wildlife protection. Through early morning and late afternoon game-drives (with Land Cruisers, mountain bikes or on horseback) we spied on countless animals we had never seen before, namely the buffalo, secretary bird, warthog, impala, eland, dwarf mongoose, Thomson’s gazelle, and a slew of more obvious ones : giraffe, zebra, lion, elephant and the highly endangered black rhino.
Borana Ranch stopover slideshow
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« John will escort you to the windmill to make sure there are no elephants, safari salama! », said Flick, Borana Lodge’s director, as we rode off from the lodge with our sight on Mount Kenya.
Mount Kenya is an eroded extinct volcano straddling the equator and culminating at 5,199 metres above sea level. Its two highest peaks (Batian and Nelion) only climbable with guides and mountaineering equipment, we dug out our hiking boots and backpacks and set out to scale its third-highest peak, Point Lenana (4,985m) on the well trodden Sirimon Route. The Kikuyu tribe believed God himself lived among the mountain’s—fast disappearing—glaciers and the trek certainly had a divine quality to it.
We went from celestial to mundane in two seconds flat when a Nanyuki technician diagnosed our laptop a write-off! If you need food, beer, gum, a map, a broom, bike parts or a television, Kenyans will send you in the direction of the nearest Nakumatt store, so this is how we, unexpectedly, bought a computer at a Kenyan supermarket!
By the time the hard-drive transplant was complete Steve’s month-long holiday was coming to an end and our friend made his way by bus to Nairobi to catch his flight to Montreal, his new derailleur used only from the bus station to his hotel. From Nanyuki our intent was to ride to Narok County and Maasai-land avoiding Nairobi and its sprawl. We could only do this by weaving our way around the Aberdare range, down into the Rift Valley and up the Mau escarpment crossing the equator 3 times, so we did.
The Maasai, a pastoralist tribe roaming the plains of Kenya and Tanzania since the beginning of the 17th century is on the list of nomadic people we would like to meet and learn from, but knowing them to be the tourists’ darlings we had little hope of getting close without loosening the purse strings. Our incapacity and unwillingness to pay for visits and photos kept us disconnected from the tall blanket-wearing spear-totting Maasai. Was it the right decision to not fork out the dollars? I don’t know. What we do know is that their nomadic lifestyle is threatened by loss of grazing land for their cattle. They are urged to grow crops (something beneath the haughty Maasai), build permanent houses and stop being a nuisance.
After a fast ride on the 2,000-metre high plateau in Maasai-land, we reintegrated Kalenjin tribal areas over green rolling hills and a patchwork of cultures. After Bomet all rivers we crossed flowed west towards Lake Victoria, the source of the river Nile.
An invite to stay at Royal City Hotel in Kisumu came just at the right moment as we needed a haven to write this post, prepare our upcoming entrance into Uganda (and fourth crossing of the equator) and celebrate Pierre’s 50th birthday! Thanks to Internet, Birthday Boy sat by the pool with a cold Tusker in hand, and received love from every time zones. Fifty years old already. Time flies. It flies so much that we have only one month left on our East Africa Visas. Let’s go!
