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”→
Published Nation newspaper-Saturday magazine 28 April 2018
Above: Impala herd browsing in Nairobi National Park with Nairobi skyline
Copyright Rupi Mangat
Wild flowers in bloom in Nairobi National Park 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.
Indigenous orchid in Kenya – Iphone at Brackenhurst Copyright Mark Nicholson
Above – Orchids – indigenous to Kenya at Brackenhurst in Limuru – Iphone
Copyright Mark Nicholson
Published Nation newspaper Saturday magazine 21 April 2018
“Africa and Madagascar were joined like this,” demonstrates Dr Mark Nicholson of Plants for Life and the person who has recreated the natural forest at Brackenhurst Botanic Garden in Limuru as a model to show that indigenous forests can be restored after removing plantations of exotic trees.
Above: Omieri the African rock python in her new glass cage. Notice the burn mark on exreme right that she received in 1987 – which led to her death.
Copyrigt Rupi Mangat
In 1987 l went to see Omieri the she-python who suddenly shot to fame on account of having being caught in a fire that left her in very bad health. She was coiled lethargic in her glass cage and succumbed to her wounds on 25th June 1987. In the passage of time, l forgot about her.
Fast forward to 27th March 2018.
Thirty years later l’m face-to-face with Omieri again. This time though she’s dead, her long beautifully patterned body in a special glass case and preserved in ethanol. Her burn wound is visible but she’s now a national celebrity on permanent exhibition at the Nairobi Snake Park thanks to a young woman called Diana Injendi.
Moonlion Safaris 