Author: Rupi Mangat

2013 Ecotourism Journalist of the Year (Ecotourism Society of Kenya) | Editor, Komba Magazine (Wildlife Clubs of Kenya) | Contributor, The East African and Saturday Magazine (Nation)

In Magadi’s Magical Moonlight

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It was the red rock in the night sky at Island Camp Baringo that spurred me to Lake Magadi to watch the longest total lunar eclipse of the 21st century on Friday 27th July 2018 that lasted an hour and 43 minutes. I wasn’t risking the event of the century in cloudy Nairobi. Magadi, lying low in the rift, always hot as hell with clear skies, was my closest escape from Nairobi. When Kenya Museum Society announced the trip to witness the blood moon there, l was on it.

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Buff overlooking Lake Magadi with Duncan Ole Kitipa

My imagination was already running riot with a startling red moon filling the sky with an equally red Mars, the closest it’s been to the moon in 15 years. Continue reading “In Magadi’s Magical Moonlight” →

Bogoria’s Flaming Flamingos

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Bogoria’s pnk wings – copyright Maya Mangat

It’s a magical wonderland.

Crimson ribbons fly across a lustrous lake for its entire length. It’s the pink flamingos – more precisely the Lesser flamingos – of Bogoria, the caustic cauldron just north of the Equator in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley. In between the shorter more glamorous birds we see few of the less glamorous Greater flamingos. Continue reading “Bogoria’s Flaming Flamingos” →

Turtles Hatching

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On Manda Island in the Lamu archipelago

Above: Green Turtles hatching on Manda Island – Copyright Maya Mangat

“The turtles are hatching today,” announced an excited Famau Shukri of Lamu Marine Conservation Trust ( LaMCoT) over the phone. With exciting news like this first thing in the morning, l jumped out of bed and raced down the two flights of steps of Amu House, the historical 16th century old house in Lamu. “The turtles are hatching today,” l relayed the news to everyone at breakfast and plans immediately changed to sail to Shela the neighbouring village to Lamu Stone Town to meet up with Shukri.

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On the Isles of Lake Baringo

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A red rock in the sky startles me. It’s unblinking and huge compared to the rest of the constellations littered in the Milk Way. It’s Mars, the Red Planet at its brightest since 2003 and close to reaching directly opposite the sun in the Earth’s sky, giving us the closest view of Mars in 15 years.

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Sunset – Lake Baringo from Island Camp, Lake Baringo – Maya Mangat

Continue reading “On the Isles of Lake Baringo” →