Nature has been generous to Kenya. Like pearls upon a string its natural wonders spill out across the landscape, from � ery desert to snowcapped

tropical peak through volcanoes, inland seas, the mighty Rift Valley itself and � nally down to an azure coral coast.

Over this spectacular setting wander the last of theearth’s great concentrations of plains game — the wildebeest and zebra herds, graceful gazelles, elephants, rhinos, bu� aloes, stately gira� es and the predators wholive on them, the lions, leopards, cheetahs and hyenas. Many rare species roam in this great natural wilderness, clinging to a tenuous existence.

This ancient land has also recently yielded up invaluable secrets about the origin of mankind itself. Tectonic movements in the earth’s plates have revealed richtreasures of fossil remains, which have helped scientists date the emergence of earliest man.

Overlaid on this garden of Eden is modern Kenya, a country of neat tea plantations, busy factories, skyscrapered city and bustling tourist resorts. Uniformed chau� eurs driving mini-vans to take international businessmen to stare at zebras.

Such contrasts, and the spirit of this remarkable country, are brilliantly captured in Journey through Kenya, a book written and photographed by people who have madetheir lives there, and illustrated with 150 outstandingcolour photographs.

Journey through Kenya is a volume in the Journey series of illustrated books produced by Camerapix Publishers International.

Other titles in this series:

Journey through EthiopiaJourney through JordanJourney through MaldivesJourney through NamibiaJourney through NepalJourney through PakistanJourney through SeychellesJourney through TanzaniaJourney through UgandaJourney through Zimbabwe

Jacket photographs: (front) Male lion with flowing patriarchal mane and implacable golden stare; (back) The soft evening sunshine breaks through lowering skies in northern Kenya.

Price: UK£34.99

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• TETLEY

MOHAMED AMINLong acknowledged Africa’s greatest photographer camera-man, the late Mohamed Amin recorded and � lmed themajor events of Africa, Asia and the Middle East from thelate 1950s until his untimely death in 1996.

He was awarded an MBE by Queen Elizabeth II in Britain’s 1992 honours to add to the many coveted individual awards he holds, including the University of California’s Theodore E. Kruglak Special Award, the USA George Polk Award, Overseas Press Club of America Award, Britain’s Valiant for Truth Award, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award,the Royal Television Society’s Judge’s Award, and the Guildof Television ‘Cameramen’s Cameraman‘ award.

Mohamed Amin was born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1943, and was the chief executive of Camerapix group of televisionand publishing companies based in Nairobi. He was also the Africa bureau chief of Reuters Television, the world’s largest television news agency.

A fellow of Britain’s Royal Geographical Society, he alsoheld one of Pakistan’s highest civil honours — the Tamghai-Imtiaz — and in 1994 the President of Kenya honouredhim with the Order of the Grand Warrior..

His books include Pilgrimage to Mecca (1978), Mecca (1980), Cradle of Mankind (1981), Run Rhino Run (1982), Ivory Crisis (1983), Portraits of Africa (1983), Railway across the Equator (1986), Defenders of Pakistan (1988), and others with Duncan Willetts (see below).

DUNCAN WILLETTSOne of Africa and Europe’s major creative photographers Duncan Willetts was born in England in 1945. A regular contributor to Time-Life, Newsweek, and other major magazines and newspapers around the world, his books with Mohamed Amin include Journey through Pakistan, Journey through Kenya, Journey through Tanzania, Karachi, The Last of the Maasai, Railway Across the Equator, Journey through Nepal, Lahore, Kenya: The Magic Land, Roof of the World, Journey through Zimbabwe, On God’s Mountain: the story of Mount Kenya, Pakistan: From Mountains to Sea, Journey through Maldives, Journey through Namibia, Journey through Jordan, Journey through Seychelles and Spectrum Guides to African Wildlife Safaris, Kenya, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Seychelles, Tanzania, Maldives, Namibia, Jordan, South Africa and Ethiopia.

BRIAN TETLEYBorn in Birmingham, England, in 1934, Brian Tetley was an internationally known travel writer with a keen interest in wildlife and cultures, who worked for many years in Britain’s Fleet Street. He was a popular columnist on Kenya’s Nation newspaper during the late 1960s and worked regularly with Mohamed Amin from 1970 until his death in 1995. He was Editorial Director at Camerapix and wrote the text for Cradleof Mankind, Journey through Kenya, Karachi, Journey through Nepal, Defenders of Pakistan, Mo: Front-line Cameraman, The Roof of The World and On God’s Mountain: the story of Mount Kenya.

PHILIP BRIGGSPhilip Briggs is a travel and environmental writer specialising in Africa. Born in Britain and raised in South Africa, he has backpacked through many African countries, researching editions of the Bradt Guides, returning regularly to update his material. He has also led wildlife and bird watching tours. He is the author of a dozen travel guides, Journey through Uganda, with photographer David Pluth, and the spectacular co� ee-table book, Africa: Continent of Contrasts in collaboration with photographers Martin Harvey and Ariadne Van Zandbergen. He has contributed more than 100 magazine features to the likes of Wanderlust, BBC Wildlife, Travel Africa, Africa Geographic and Africa Birds and Birding. For Journey through Kenya (which was � rst published in 1982) Philip carried out major revisions and updates to Brian Tetley’s original text, bringing the book completely up to date.

PO Box 45048, 00100 GPO, Nairobi, Kenya

KENYAJ O U R N E Y T H R O U G H

MOHAMED AMIN • DUNCAN WILLETTS • BRIAN TETLEY

jt kenya cvr final.indd 1 7/22/10 11:18:53 AM

JOURNEY THROUGH

KENYA

• MOHAMED AMIN • DUNCAN WILLETTS • BRIAN TETLEY •

JOURNEY THROUGH

KENYA

This book was designed and produced by Camerapix Publishers InternationalPO Box 45048, 00100 GPO Nairobi, Kenya

Revised edition 2011

© Camerapix 2011

ISBN: 978-1-904722-50-2

Production Director: Rukhsana HaqRevised Text: Philip BriggsEditor: Roger BarnardEditorial Assistant: Cecilia GaithoDesign: Rachel MusyimiPicture Research: Abdul Rehman and Sam Kimani

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in Singapore.

Half-title: Traditional Maasai jewellery.

Contents: The road crosses the Equator from south to north just before you enter Nanyuki.

Title page: The impala is perhaps the most graceful of the plains antelopes. The zigzagging leaps and bounds of its escape make it difficult for a predator to select a victim.

Following pages: The jagged peaks, eroded slopes and numerous valleys of Mount Kenya (5,199 metres), the highest mountain in Kenya and the second-highest in Africa.

All pictures by Camerapix except the following:-

Ariadne Van Zandbergen: Pages 35, 38-39, 94, 96, 152, 156-157, 170-171, 175, 178-179.

David Pluth: Cover, Pages 56-57, 59.

Karl Ammaan: Backcover, Pages 2-3, 17, 64-65, 110, 115, 121, 132, 133, 138 (top and bottom), 147.

Robert Harding: Pages 22-23, 28 (top and bottom), 31, 44-45, 46, 47, 48, 76, 117, 142, 149, 160, 164, 166, 167, 181, 185, 190.

1. Journey through Kenya 9

2. Nairobi — City in the Sun 23

3. Through the Great Rift Valley 39

4. Westward Ho! 57

5. The Deserts and the Lake 81

6. Mountain Greenery 105

7. Elephant Country 129

8. The Coral Coast 157

9. The North Coast 179

CONTENTS

1. Journey through Kenya

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Kenya is the archetypal safari destination. Scenically, it represents Africa on the grandest imaginable scale: a land of bejewelled palm-fringed Indian Ocean beaches and vast freshwater inland

seas, of snow-capped mountains and parched boulder-strewn deserts, of wide open plains and cloistered rainforests, of bustling modern cities and timeworn Swahili backwaters, of modern skyscrapers and jungle bound-ruins.

Kenya is dominated in geographical terms by the Great Rift Valley, a vast kilometre-deep trough that bisects the country from north to south, its floor studded with dormant cones, smoking craters and other volcanic relics. Latitudinally, it is one of a dozen countries worldwide to span both hemispheres, and unique among them in that the jagged peaks of Mount Kenya support permanent glacial activity within a few kilometres of the equator.

As diverse culturally as it is scenically, Kenya is home to dozens of different indigenous ethnic groups, each with its own language, customs and history. These range from the coastal Swahili, whose laid-back Islamic culture is strongly informed by a millennium of maritime trade and interaction with Arabia, to the pastoralist and staunchly traditionalist Maasai and Samburu, to the El Molo fishermen of the Turkana region and agricultural Kikuyu of the central highlands.

Above all, however, Kenya is renowned for its wildlife. It is here that you’ll find the devastatingly wild and beautiful African landscapes celebrated by the likes of Hemingway and Karen ‘Out of Africa’ Blixen in the early 20th century; here that you can come face-to-face with the fabulous beasts beamed around the world in television documentaries such as the BBC’s Big Cat Diary, and in reality programmes such as Survivor Africa.

Big Cat Diary was filmed in Kenya’s Maasai Mara Wildlife Reserve, also the site of the legendary annual migration of up to two million wildebeest, which arrive from the Serengeti Plains in neighbouring Tanzania every August, and stick around for a couple of months before traipsing back southwards. Survivor, by contrast, was set in the remote Shaba National Reserve, which together with the near-contiguous Samburu-Buffalo Springs complex protects a host of dry-country species whose range is now practically confined to Kenya — the bulky Grevy’s zebra, singularly handsome reticulated giraffe and stately Beisa oryx among them.

You don’t need to travel long distances to see wildlife here. Most journeys through Kenya start in Nairobi, a bustling modern capital of three million people, one that boasts genuinely world-class amenities

Previous pages: Sunset colours the still waters of Lake Victoria as Suba fishermen paddle their canoe home. The Suba, closely allied to the Kuria, live on a string of islands near Homa Bay on Kenya’s south-east coast of Lake Victoria.

Right: An early morning game flight in a hot-air balloon is the high point of a Maasai Mara visit for some.

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Map of Kenya previous copy pg 10

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and packs an economic punch matched by a mere handful of cities in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, where the capital’s industrial belt ends, practically within 10 minutes’ walk of East Africa’s busiest international airport, so begins the extraordinary Nairobi National Park, a unique sanctuary, unfenced on three sides, where lions and cheetahs are frequently seen in action below the shimmering skyscrapers of the central business district. There are few other places in the world, perhaps none, where the ancient rhythms of untamed nature co-exist in such close geographic proximity to a modern city.

To a first-time visitor to Kenya there is magic at night, when every tree becomes an elephant and every rock a rhino. In most national parks there are lodges where these animals parade under the light of electric moons. These performances were staged long ago — before modern man took his first footsteps, perhaps near the shores of Lake Turkana at a palaeontological site called Koobi Fora, where some of the oldest known human fossils have been unearthed, signifying an occupancy that spans several million years.

The incredible wildlife that inhabits Kenya’s wild places should never be taken for granted. Indeed, were it not for the dedication to conservation — and its potential to attract the big tourist dollars — exhibited by successive governments, there might be very little left today.

Contrast that to the situation in the late 19th century when the first Europeans arrived in the East African interior, to find it inhabited by a seemingly inexhaustible stock of large mammals. This wildlife had coexisted with, and even supported, hominid populations for millions of years before this, yet within a matter of decades, much of it was gone. The Mombasa railway, dubbed ‘Iron Snake’ by the Maasai and the Kikuyu, brought the first tourists, a Victorian and Edwardian elite of dukes and earls, peers and princes, and high-born ‘sport’ hunters who took a heavy toll of Eden’s beasts. In I909, President Roosevelt, in the name of science, killed hundreds of rare specimens for American natural history collections. Did the Smithsonian Institution really need 13 stuffed rhinoceroses?

The wildlife massacres reached a first peak during World War Two when Kenya accommodated — and fed — thousands of prisoners from the world conflict. They were mainly Italians from neighbouring Ethiopia and Somalia. Kenya was also a supply point for ships en route to other imperial possessions that required food. The herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and goats in the Highlands were supplemented with Thomson’s gazelle, impala, zebra, eland and other antelopes.

The war’s end, however, brought a reaction to the slaughter of the previous 50 years. Prior to that, when conservationists had proposed a

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Above: Creatures of myth and heraldry — Beisa oryx at Shaba.

Left: Nature in the raw lion pride on a Grevy’s zebra kill. The vultures will swoop down after them.