Tag: Hiking
-
Camping Wild in the Aberdares
We followed a dusty two-track in the forested salient of the Aberdares. Thick patches of striking purple Vernonia shrubs bulged into the road, and twisted white tree trunks punctuated a sea of deep green on the hillsides. We rounded a bend, and a mud-coated buffalo lay in our path, unperturbed. A large male leopard suddenly […]
-
Weekend Camping in the Aberdares
Many of you will be familiar with ‘Mzee’, our old 1976 Range Rover. Mzee has featured heavily in this column over the 30 or so years that it has been running, and his trips have tended to generate more interest from readers than your average Going Places article. We received lots of emails, in particular, […]
-
New Guidebook to The Mau Eburu Forest
I came to work a few weeks ago and found a large brown envelope on my desk. Inside was a new copy of The Mau Eburu Forest – A Visitors’ Guide, and a very neatly written letter from the guide’s editor, Gordon Boy. ‘I hope this guide might inspire one (or more) in your team […]
-
A Weekend at the ‘Buffalo Mountain’
The Masai call it the ‘Big Mountain’. The Kikuyu call it the ‘Buffalo Mountain’. Ol Donyo Sabuk, or Kilima Mbogo, is not particularly big by Kenyan standards, but it is full of buffaloes. I often see the mountain in a haze on the horizon from Nairobi, but it’s an area that I’ve never really explored. […]
-
Climbing Mount Kenya the Long Way Up
I was 15 when I first climbed Mount Kenya. I did the Sirimon Route in high school. I remember magnificent vistas, my first snow, a pounding headache and a chesty cough. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been allowed to make the summit. In the years since, friends have asked my advice about climbing either Kilimanjaro […]
-
Trekking with the World’s Rarest Wolf
Last Sunday I wrote about Ethiopia’s sprawling capital, and the first few days of my 10 day visit to the country. Once we felt we’d exhausted Addis’ coffee shops and museums, we got on a bus and made the eight hour journey south to the Bale Mountains. The first leg was down the long, straight, […]
-
Mount Kenya: A Peak Experience
I can only vaguely remember the first time I climbed up Mount Kenya. This is largely a consequence of my notoriously bad memory – which isn’t helped by the fact that the trip took place eight-or-so years ago. What I do recall though, was spending a windy night next to my chemistry teacher at Shipton’s […]
Going Places Africa 