Sun-burnished mangrove leaves float like skeins of gold thread on the blue waters of the Indian Ocean. We’re sailing from Lamu Stone Town on Lamu Island to Manda Island that lies across the channel. Our boatman points to the village settled by the Luo from the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya. The men quarry for coral on the island and chisel the hard rock into building blocks for construction. They are hardy men carrying up to five blocks on a shoulder to load the boats that carry them away. A statue of a quarry man with the bricks on his shoulder stands on the edge of the village that is called Jaluo after the people, so tells our Swahili boatman. Continue reading “A Trip to Takwa”→
Camille is sophistication personified and a walk with her around her current exhibition which was exhibited at Muthaiga Country Club this month (May), showcases two diverse Kenyan landscapes she’s painted using different media. Having studied art in Italy, she’s held several exhibitions around the world.
Above: The ancient crystalline rock face of Ngangao some 260 million years old in Taita Hills – during the time of the dinosaurs.
Copyright Rupi Mangat
Published:Saturday magazine, Nation newspaper, 19 May 2018
Taita Thrush in neighbouring Yale forest where there are 2 pairs in 2015 – copyright Luca Borghesio
“It’s the nest of Taita thrush,” whispers Handrison Mwameso, the guide from Dawida Biodiversity Conservation group (DABICO). We’re inside Ngangao forest on the high peaks of the magical Taita Hills in southeast Kenya. We’ve walked a few metres from our campsite into the forest entering though a narrow path shaded by a bunch of Phoenix reclinata, a common palm tree here.
Dry weather in November 2017 – Mt Esakut from Olorgesailie – copyright Rupi Mangat 5 May 2018
I’m alone walking between two ancient volcanoes on sands that have weathered the times and bleached white by the relentless sun with volcanic rubble strewn around. Tiny white flowers and petals of yellow on skeletal green stalks that otherwise are so brittle during the dry season carpet the ground.
I’m at Olorgesailie, home of our ancestors, the upright human or Homo erectus who walked out of Africa and into the bigger world a million years ago.
Above: Black rhino and her calf in Nairobi National Park with Nairobi city in the horizon.
Copyright Rupi Mangat
Published Nation Newspaper – Saturday magazine – 21 November 1998
The Nairobi National Park – a rare place where modern skyscrapers brush shoulders with the creatures of the wild
Space, beauty, vast savanna in Nairobi city in the horizon. Copyright Rupi Mangat
The uninterrupted flow of the sky, the wide open space, the grass carpet on the savannah, the unexpected thrill of seeing a wild animal – it’s all so fascinating. So it never fails to amaze me when someone remarks, “We never saw anything at the Nairobi National Park.” How on earth can anyone say that? But l guess for a lot of people the idea of a national park is a place teeming with wild animals where drama is the order of the day, where the glossy brochure lion strides majestically across the plains, where the cheetah sprints at full throttle and where eagles soar in the sky. Fed up with such stories from the array of glossy holiday brochures and coffee table books showcasing the models of the wild, it’s not hard to imagine why so many people expect to find things like they do in a shopping mall – where whatever you want to buy or see is where it always is. We are used to the expected, and so when we visit the national park, the animals must be all there for us! But national parks aren’t zoos – you don’t go from one cage to the next, where neat little signs tell you what animal you are looking at. The national park is about the unexpected – you go there as a guest to experience the grand spectacle of life. And that is what Nairobi National Park is all about. Continue reading “City Breaks”→
Moonlion Safaris 