Above: The dinosaur at Kitale Museum. Copyright Rupi Mangat
Published: 9 February 2019
The Maasai of old called it Ol Doinyo Ilgoon which morphed into Mount Elgon that frames the town of Kitale. By a stretch of imagination, the Maasai saw its shape as that of a woman’s breast.
Continue reading “A Collection From the Old Days at Kitale Museum”
Above: Mount Elgon. Copyright Maya Mangat
Published: 2 February 2019
The grand massif dominates the western skyline around Kitale. Superlatives describe it as the oldest extinct volcano in East Africa dated at 24 million years ago – much older than the 19,340-foot tall, three-million-year old Kilimanjaro that is Africa’s tallest.
With an eighty kilometre diameter, Elgon also boasts the largest volcanic base in the world. It would have once towered over Kilimanjaro but over millennia much of it has been eroded to leave behind dramatic bare faced cliffs and peaks with the highest, Wagagai at 14,177 feet in Uganda. Elgon now is East Africa’s fourth and Africa’s eighth highest mountain with a dramatic 40-square-kilometre caldera.
Wild flowers on Endebess cliff on Mount Elgon. Copyright Maya Mangat
Above: Kapenguria Museum – The Heroes Cells of the Kapenguria Six on trial. Copyright Maya Mangat
Published: 19 January 2019
We’re at Barnley’s farm near Saiwa Swamp famous for its rare herd of sitatunga, the marsh-loving antelope with its water-repellent coat and splayed hooves when we learn that the road from Kitale to Kapenguria and beyond is now smooth as silk. It has the mind wandering to a destination that we hadn’t planned on doing because until recently the un-tarmacked road was treacherous despite the short distance.
Kapenguria was the place in the 1950s that the colonial government saw fit to have the famous freedom fighters arrested and tried in a place that boasted a path for a road minus any modern amenity like electricity and running water. Continue reading “Kapenguria’s Famous Address: The Kapenguria Museum”
Above: Osprey in Juja. Copyright James Kashangaki
Published: 5 January2019
When Elspeth Huxley penned the Flame Trees of Thika, the road out of Nairobi in 1913 was very different from the Thika super-highway we are driving on to reach Juja, 40 kilometres away. Her description from the novel is of her as a six-year old with her mother on an ox wagon travelling out of Nairobi to meet her father who has just acquired virgin land that’s deemed to be great for coffee farming.
Continue reading “Underground River, Coffee and Birding in Juja”
Above: Tree Fern Forest in Vuria. Copyright Rupi Mangat
Published: 29 December 2018
It’s a hide-and-seek game with the mist and the mountains. Standing at the base of Vuria, the rock peaks vanish in the white mist only to reappear and vanish time and again. Vuria is the highest hill of the Taita Hills. The hill tops are draped in ancient forest surrounded by local homesteads and farms of the Taita people.
Continue reading “Wandering in Vuria and Iyale on the Mist Mountains of the Taita Hills”
Moonlion Safaris 