Above: Chyulu Hills from Kilaguni Serena Lodge in Tsavo West Copyright Rupi Mangat
“Look out for chameleons on every tree and bush,” l asked the Kenya Wildlife Service ranger as we drove very carefully through the tall lush grass growing over what is supposed to be the road. Heavy grey clouds sat atop the stately peaks of the Chyulu Hills draped luscious green.
The ranger looked at me incredulously.
On the magical mist mountains of Taita Hills
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
“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.
The fascinating metropolis of ancient ancestors
Above: Mt Olorgesailie decked in cloud and wild flowers – copyright Rupi Mangat 5 May 2018
Published: Saturday magazine Nation newspaper 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.
In my aloneness my mind begins to wander. Continue reading “Time travelling through Olorgesailie”
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
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”
Amazing Skies, Savannas and Species
Published Nation newspaper-Saturday magazine 28 April 2018
Above: Impala herd browsing in Nairobi National Park with Nairobi skyline
Copyright Rupi Mangat
Armed with the colour printout of some common reptiles of Nairobi National Park by the reptilian guru Stephen Spawls, co-author of the amazing 500-page tome of ‘A Field Guide to the Reptiles of East Africa’, we drove in wanting to see some rarities like the Black-necked spitting cobra and Puff adder listed as highly venomous.
Moonlion Safaris 