My First Morning in the Maasai Mara
I remember sitting upright at 4:47 a.m. in a canvas tent somewhere in the middle of the Mara and thinking, for a brief second, that I had made a terrible mistake. It was pitch...
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Latest Stories
Standing at the Foot of Kilimanjaro
There is a photograph taken of me on my third morning in Amboseli that I look at whenever I need reminding why I travel. In it, I am standing beside our Land Cruiser, one hand...
The Red Elephants of Tsavo
Everyone who has been to Kenya has an opinion about Tsavo, and the opinions are almost never neutral. Either they will tell you it is too big, too dry, too remote - or they will...
From Safari Dust to Ocean Breeze
By the time I landed in Mombasa at the end of my second Kenya safari, I was physically and spiritually coated in dust. Not metaphorical dust - actual, red-brown Tsavo dust that...
Getting Lost on Purpose: A Week in Lamu
Lamu smells like frankincense, salt water, and faintly of donkey, which sounds less appealing written down than it actually is. You step off the small plane at Manda Island...
Cycling Through Hell's Gate
The name Hell's Gate sounds like something a slightly overdramatic map-maker came up with after a bad day, but once you are standing inside the gorge - red cliff faces rising...
Samburu: Where Kenya Gets Strange
I am going to say something that might sound like a complaint but is in fact a compliment: Samburu National Reserve is deeply weird. Not in a bad way. In the way that certain...
Lake Nakuru and the Pink Shore
I want to talk about something that I only half-believed existed until I saw it with my own eyes: a lake whose entire shoreline appears to be pink. Not metaphorically pink. Not...
Nairobi: The Safari City That Keeps Surprising Me
I have a confession to make about Nairobi. When I first started planning Kenya trips, I treated the city as a transit node - somewhere you fly into and fly out of as efficiently...
Mount Kenya: What Nobody Tells You
I am going to be honest about something that most Mount Kenya write-ups skip: the altitude is a real and humbling thing, and I handled it with less dignity than I would have...
The Great Wildebeest Migration
Let me tell you what I thought the Great Wildebeest Migration was before I saw it, so you can understand why seeing it required a fairly significant reorientation. I thought it...
The Green Hills of Hemingway
There is a particular kind of green that only exists in the Chyulu Hills at six in the morning, when the mist is still burning off the ridgelines and the light comes through it...
The Conservancies of Laikipia
The most important thing happening in Kenyan safari right now is not happening in a national park. It is happening in Laikipia, a high plateau north of Mount Kenya that is not a...
The Jade Sea: A Journey to Lake Turkana
You do not stumble upon Lake Turkana. You commit to it. The journey north from Nairobi takes two hard days of driving across some of the most punishing and least-visited terrain...
Kakamega: Kenya's Last Rainforest
The first thing that hits you in Kakamega is the sound. After months of the wide, wind-scoured silences of Kenya's savannas and deserts, walking into Kakamega Forest is like...
Into the Aberdares: Waterfalls and Trout
You need a jacket in the Aberdares, and there is something wonderful about that. After years of Kenya being synonymous in my mind with heat, dust, and sunscreen, arriving in the...